Synergetic effect of organic cores and inorganic shells for core/shell structured composite abrasives for chemical mechanical planarization

Highlights: • The damage-free polishing mechanism of core/shell composite abrasive was explored. • The organic core is help to decrease surface roughness and mechanical damages. • The inorganic shell is in favor of improving material removal rate. • The enhanced CMP behavior is due to the synergistic effect between core and shell. - Abstract: Core/shell structured organic/inorganic composite microspheres has an important potential application in efficient and damage-free chemical mechanical planarization/polishing (CMP) as a kind of novel abrasive due to its uniform non-rigid mechanical property. However, the synergistic effect of material removal between organic cores and inorganic shells of composite abrasives is ambiguous. In this work, oxide-CMP performances of various slurries, containing polystyrene (PS) spheres, solid abrasives (SiO₂ or CeO₂), mixed abrasives ((PS + SiO₂) or (PS + CeO₂)), core/shell composites (PS/SiO₂ or PS/CeO₂), were investigated by atomic force microscopy. Experiment results indicated that the surfaces polished by composite abrasives exhibited lower surface roughness, fewer scratches as well as lower topographical variations than those by other type of abrasives. The core/shell structure of composite abrasives plays an important role in improving CMP behavior. Moreover, the organic cores are mainly beneficial to decrease surface roughness and mechanical damages, and the inorganic shells are in favor of improving material removal rate