MACHINE VISION AS INPUT TO A CMP PROCESS CONTROL ALGORITHM

Abstract: during chemical mechanical polishing of a substrate, a signal value that depends on a thickness of a layer in a measurement spot on a substrate undergoing polishing is determined by a first in-situ monitoring system. an image of at least the measurement spot of the substrate is generated by a second in-situ imaging system. machine vision processing, e.g., a convolutional neural network, is used to determine a characterizing value for the measurement spot based on the image. then a measurement value is calculated based on both the characterizing value and the signal value.

Inventor(s): Benjamin Cherian, Jun Qian, Nicholas A. Wiswell, Dominic J. Benvegnu, Boguslaw A. Swedek, Thomas H. Osterheld

CPC Classification: B24B37/013 (Devices or means for detecting lapping completion)

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