Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) Wafer Carrier

The Corona Polishing Head is a high-performance chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) wafer carrier designed to retrofit onto existing 372/472 CMP tools in the field. Boasting a quality price-to-performance ratio, the device offers quality performance compared to that of the highest performance polishing heads on the market at a cost comparable to mid-range performance polishing heads.

The Polishing Head has been under development for the past year and has successfully demonstrated improved CMP non-uniformity's at less than 4% across a 200 mm wafer to an edge exclusion of 3mm. The head has demonstrated improved uniformities at oxide removal rates of more than 4,000 A/minute on standard oxide films and at least an 80% increase in throughput performance for all types of oxide films. This has been accomplished using standard slurries, films, pads and pressure on the wafer. This performance reduces the CMP cost per wafer pass as much as 40% and can substantially increase the useful life of CMP tools now in production. The company estimates that due to the substantial improvement in product uniformity and machine throughput, the Corona Polishing head will save customers well over $1,000,000 per system, per year.

Installation time for the Corona Head Kit by the company's field engineers is less than one day with no mandatory alteration to the machine control software. The Polishing Head is also compatible with installed metrology systems.

Sitek Incorporated, 1817 W. 4th St., Tempe, Arizona 85281. Tel: 480-921-8555. Fax: 480-921-8550.