Abstract: Chemical mechanical planarization, known as CMP, is one of the key technologies in chip manufacturing and is widely used to achieve the ultrafine planarization of a variety of structures on the nanometer scale. The metals in interconnection layer exhibits quite different properties from the materials in other structures in chips, whose planarization relies more on the chemical components in the polishing slurry. The synergistic mechanism depicts the process of material removal in metal CMP:the surface of the interconnection layer is first chemically modified by the chemical components in the slurry, followed by the subsequent mechanical abrasion and then removed away. Based on the mechanism, the review highlights the contact mechanics which studies the microscopic states and functions of the abrasive particles and the developments of related models; elaborates the roles of the chemical components including oxidizers, complexing agents and inhibitors, and the process and principle of their reactions with metals; summarizes the latest progress and tendency of slurry development. It is expected that it could provide insight on the future slurry developed for new process and materials, so as to achieve the desired material removal rate, superfine planarization and ultra-low defects requirements under different situations during the rapid advancement of the semiconductor manufacturing.

Key words: chemical mechanical planarization, CMP, polishing slurry, contact mechanism, synergistic mechanism