International Business Machines Corporation

Daniel L Franca

Uldis Artis Ziemins

Raymond M Khoury

Jose M Ocasio

George F Ouimet, Jr

A method and apparatus for cleaning polishing debris from the surface of a polishing pad by wetting the surface with a liquid and irradiating the wetted surface with a beam of light. The light beam has sufficient intensity at the polishing surface of the pad to vaporize at least a portion of the liquid such that the vaporized liquid causes at least a portion of the debris to be expelled from the polishing surface of the pad.

Light energy cleaning of polishing pads

A method and apparatus for treating the surface of a substrate includes generating ozone in a generation chamber by using an optical source and transporting the ozone to a treatment chamber containing the substrate. The surface treatment utilizes an optical energy source and the generated ozone. The generation chamber and the treatment chamber are initially isolated from one another, which allows for the selective regulation of delivering ozone from the generation chamber to the treatment chamber. Preferably, a single optical source both generates ozone in the generation chamber and serves to clean and/or planarize the surface in the treatment chamber.

Growing community of inventors

Poughkeepsie, NY, United States of America

Daniel L Franca