Patent ID: 7166014

Claim:
An arrangement for providing control and monitoring of the process of planarizing a semiconductor wafer in a chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) system, the arrangement comprising: conditioning apparatus including an inlet port, an outlet port, and an abrasive conditioning disk for dispensing conditioning agents and dislodging spent polishing slurry, wafer debris and/or conditioning agents (collectively, “effluent”) from the surface of a CMP polishing pad, the conditioning apparatus further including a vacuum outlet path coupled to the outlet port for evacuating the effluent from the vicinity of the polishing pad; an analysis unit, coupled to the vacuum outlet path, for collecting at least a portion of the effluent evacuated from the polishing pad surface during a conditioning operation, the analysis unit for evaluating at least one component in the received portion of the effluent attributed to changes at the wafer surface and generating therefrom a control signal for fine-tuning the on-going process of planarizing a semiconductor wafer; and a polishing slurry delivery apparatus separate from the conditioning apparatus for dispensing at least one polishing slurry onto the surface of the polishing pad during an on-going process of planarizing a semiconductor wafer, the polishing slurry delivery apparatus responsive to the control signal generated by the analysis unit to adapt the on-going process of planarizing a semiconductor wafer in response to the evaluated changes at the wafer surface.