Spartan Polishing Pads and CMP

CMP has become a familiar term in the semiconductor industry over the years. It has come to be know with   two separate meanings.

In the early days of microchip manufacturing CMP (Chemo-Mechanical Polishing) was simply recognized as the surface preparation technique the employs material oxidation by chemical means in conjunction with mechanical abrasion to polish a virgin silicon wafer. Early polishing pads were made of natural leather materials that had many problems. Synthetic materials began to be employed and as a result today we have 3 basic categories of polishing pads although there are many versions produced in each category.

In the development of fabricated wafers (bulk polished silicon with multi-layers of metal depositions and oxides, etc.) it became necessary to planarized these various depositions. New pad options were employed as well as new generations of wafer polish (slurry) were designed for the various types of metals and oxides, etc. The term CMP (Chemical Mechanical Planarization) began to be used. Polishing machines were redesigned with different microprocessor options to achieve control of the basic polishing parameters as well as the collection of process data. As a result, today we have a very detailed technology that employs high technology machines, slurries and polishing pads.

Spartan Felt Company, a U.S. manufacturer of all three categories of polishing pads offers customized surface preparation products for both CMP (Chem-Mechanical Polishing) of virgin material (and reclaimed material) and CMP (Chemical Mechanical Planarization). When you become a customer of our CMP Pads we offer basic applications-assistance for the use of our custom polishing pad compositions.