By Jeff Dorsch

Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) technology has been around for a long time. In addition to the semiconductor industry, CMP has applications in data storage, polishing the rigid disks and magnetic heads of hard-disk drives.

Those interested in learning about developments in CMP for hard drives and integrated circuits would do well to attend the CMP Technical and Market Trends session on Thursday, July 16, at 11 a.m. in the TechXPOT North area of Moscone Center’s North Hall. Representatives of Intel, HGST, Entegris, TDK, and other companies will be speaking.

While 450-millimeter wafers haven’t been much in the news this year, Thursday’s session will include a presentation by the Global 450 Consortium, with speakers from the College of Nanoscale Science + Engineering (CNSE) and SEMATECH.

CNSE is part of the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany, N.Y., which also contains the Chemical Mechanical Planarization Center, a joint program with SEMATECH. Mitsubishi Chemical joined the program this spring.

While CMP is still used for its traditional polishing applications for interlayer dielectrics, it’s also finding employment in more advanced applications, such as bulk oxide polishing, shallow trench isolation, “stop on poly” isolation, and polishing of various dielectrics in advanced transistor designs.

CMP includes consumable products, polishing pads and slurries. Dow Chemical is the leading vendor in polishing pads, while Cabot Microelectronics dominates the CMP slurry market.

Late last month, Applied Materials and Cadence Design Systems announced that they are collaborating on optimizing the CMP process through silicon characterization and modeling for ICs with 14-nanometer features, and beyond that process node. Cadence, one of the leading vendors of electronic design automation software and services, will provide its CMP Predictor and CMP Process Optimizer tools. Applied will employ its Reflexion LK Prime CMP system.

“From our collaboration, we expect to more accurately predict gate height, dishing and erosion on each step of the CMP process, which could enable design and manufacturing teams to achieve higher yield and deliver advanced-node designs to market faster,” Derek Witty, vice president and general manager of Applied’s CMP Products Group, said in a statement.

Whatever your level of expertise in CMP, SEMICON West 2015 will help you polish up your knowledge of the field.