Lam unveils Teres CMP system

Electronic News, March 2, 1998 by Dylan McGrath

Fremont, Calif.--Lam Research has week unveiled its long-awaited entry into the chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) market, the Teres system.

Teres, which is Latin for flat or level, takes advantage of Lam's proprietary Linear Planarization Technology (LPT), which uses a belt-driven polish pad operating at high speed and low polish pressure. Jim Bagley, Lam CEO, said the Teres system offers technology not available on existing CMP machines. "We think our technology will be more applicable to polishing patterned wafers," he said.

Key benefits of the Teres CMP system include the ability to minimize defect density by preventing drying of slurry residues on wafer surfaces. It also eliminates potential contamination caused by moving wet wafers to a separate post-clean system. The system also has a relatively small footprint at 6 feet wide by 12 feet long, or 72 square feet. Lam said the Teres is also scaleable to 300mm.

"The time to planarize with the Teres is very short--even for very impressive structures--typically less than two minutes," said Rahul Jairath, Lam's director of CMP technology.

According to Wilbur Krussell, VP and CMP GM of Lam, the process portion of the Teres system is based on the Aurora tool of OnTrak Systems, which was acquired by Lam last year. The automation of the Teres system is completely new, he said.

Mr. Jairath said Lam used data yielded from the Aurora, which was sent to beta sites in 1995, to help create its CMP system. "The purpose of the Aurora was always for us to work with customers at their site to prove the technology," he said. "The Aurora systems were installed, and we got the data we needed to design the Teres."

Representatives of Lam would not reveal the pricing of the new system or whether any orders have been received. "It's priced like a Cavalier with Mercedes performance," Mr. Bagley said.

"Teres provides Lam's customers with complete integration of etch, CVD, and CMP process steps for the trench and damascene structures needed for today's advanced processing requirements," Mr. Krussell said.

In a related development, Lam presented two Teres-related technical papers at the Third International Chemical Mechanical Planarization for ULSI Multilevel Interconnection Conference (CMP MIC) last week in Santa Clara, Calif. Both discussed LPT. "Effect of High Relative Speed on Planarization Length in Oxide Chemical Mechanical Polishing," written by researchers at MIT and Sandia National Laboratories, who used the Teres CMP system to evaluate the effect of polish speed on planarization efficiency. "A Wide Margin CMP and Clean Process for Shallow Trench Isolation Applications," co-authored by researchers at Lam and Rodel Corp., was presented by Mr. Jairath, and used LPT to evaluate a new approach to post-trench fill planarization that opened the typically narrow process window for shallow trench isolation (STI) applications.