Effects of physico-chemical properties between poly(ethyleneimine) and silica abrasive on copper chemical mechanical planarization

• We have proposed low dishing slurry for Cu CMP.
• PEI-modified silica abrasive shows the low dishing.
• The dishing of Cu pattern film was reduced from 50 to 20 nm as function of molecular weight of PEI.

We investigated the effect of poly (ethyleneimine) (PEI)-modified silica abrasive on the removal rate and the degree of dishing during Cu chemical mechanical planarization (CMP). The PEI-modified silica abrasive was prepared by mutually attractive electrostatic forces between PEI and silica abrasive. The physico-chemical behaviors between PEI and the silica abrasive were evaluated by total organic carbon (TOC), force-separation measurements using atomic force microscopy (AFM) with molecular weight of PEI, which was found to adsorb on silica at pH 7.0 following a Langmuir isotherm. The maximum adsorbed amounts of low and high molecular weight PEI were 0.195 mg/m2 and 0.228 mg/m2, respectively. AFM results showed the repulsive force of the adsorbed PEI layers on the silica surface and the adsorption thickness of PEI on silica vary with the molecular weight of PEI. A twofold change was observed in the AFM analysis. First, the increased areal density of adsorbed PEI caused a higher zeta-potential and longer reaching repulsive force. Second, the adsorption thickness was also significantly enlarged. High molecular weight showed increased adsorption thickness under similar conditions compared to low molecular weight of PEI. These changes of silica abrasive such as electrostatic forces and steric interaction vary with molecular weight of PEI reduced the dishing of Cu pattern film from 50 to 20 nm.

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