Applied Materials, Inc.

Jeffrey P Schmidt

Stacy Meyer

Douglas R McAllister

Trung Tri Doan

Steven M Zuniga

Hung Chih Chen

Jeonghoon Oh

Charles C Garretson

Sidney P Huey

Danny Cam Toan Lu

James Chang Wang

Venkata R Balagani

Martin S Wohlert

Michael Jon Fong

Kerry F Hughes

Aden Martin Allen

Romain Beau De Lamenie

Jian Lin

Jay Rohde

Yan Rozenzon

George Wong

Trung T Doan

A retaining ring can be shaped by machining or lapping the bottom surface of the ring to form a shaped profile in the bottom surface. The bottom surface of the retaining ring can include flat, sloped and curved portions. The lapping can be performed using a machine that dedicated for use in lapping the bottom surface of retaining rings. During the lapping the ring can be permitted to rotate freely about an axis of the ring. The bottom surface of the retaining ring can have curved or flat portions.

Method of forming retaining ring with shaped surface

Retaining ring with shaped surface and method of forming

Retaining ring with shaped surface

Retaining ring with Shaped Surface

A polishing head is tested in a test station having a pedestal for supporting a test wafer and a controllable pedestal actuator to move a pedestal central wafer support surface and a test wafer toward the polishing head. In another aspect of the present description, the test wafer may be positioned using a positioner having a first plurality of test wafer engagement members positioned around the pedestal central wafer support surface. In another aspect, the wafer position may have a second plurality of test wafer engagement members positioned around an outer wafer support surface disposed around the pedestal central wafer support surface and adapted to support a test wafer. The second plurality of test wafer engagement members may be distributed about a second circumference of the ring member, the second circumference having a wider diameter than the first circumference. Additional embodiments and aspects are described and claimed.

Polishing head testing with movable pedestal

Techniques for attaching a retaining ring to a carrier head so that the bottom surface of the retaining ring is orthogonal to a central rotational axis of the carrier head are described.

Attaching components of a carrier head

A programmable halogen lamp assembly radiantly heats a post-etch wafer in a semiconductor wafer processing environment to evolve corrosive, chlorine based compounds that reside on or in the processed wafer, preferably during wafer unloading to minimize throughput loss, and preferably under vacuum to prevent the onset of a corrosion reaction.

Chlorine reduction module

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jeffrey P Schmidt