Integrated electrochemical analysis of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as the inhibitor for copper chemical mechanical planarization (Cu-CMP)

Copper chemical mechanical planarization (Cu-CMP) is an essential procedure for the fabrication of integrated circuits (IC). The corrosion inhibitors in the Cu-CMP slurry could balance the over etching from the corrosion reagents to facilitate the global planarization of the copper layers. However, the normally used Cu-CMP inhibitor 1-benzotriazole (BTA) was toxic for the long time usage. In this paper, the biocompatible polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) was proposed to substitute the BTA in the Cu-CMP. With an integrated electrochemical test, including the Tafel polarization, electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS), and the electrochemical noise (EN), it was found that the PVP could possess a good inhibition effect comparable to BTA, which opened up a promising way for the design of biocompatible inhibitors in the Cu-CMP.