Method for accelerated diamond fracture characterization in chemical mechanical planarization

•A method for accelerated diamond fracture characterization was developed.•The method provided effective differentiation among different diamond disks.•The accelerated method provided consistent results compared to a regular wear test.•The method can be used rapidly for disk characterization and quality assessment.

An accelerated method for diamond fracture characterization in chemical mechanical planarization processes was developed and several practice examples were described showing that the accelerated fracture test was appropriate for differentiating among typical diamond conditioner disks. First, the top ten aggressive diamonds for each of the three conditioner disks tested were identified and imaged using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Next, the three disks were subjected to a 30-min accelerated fracture test against an aluminum plate on an Araca APD-800 polisher. SEM images were taken again on the same ten most aggressive diamonds. Even though the accelerated fracture test was designed to be analogous to conventional pad conditioning, significant changes to the diamonds could be seen only after 30 min of conditioning. Image analysis demonstrated that diamond fracture occurred in all three cases, but to very different extents.

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