Patent ID: 6858538

Claim:
A method for diagnosing mechanical or chemical-mechanical polarization processing of microelectronic-device substrate assemblies, comprising: moving at least one of the substrate assembly and the polishing pad relative to one another in a plagiarizing plane to generate lateral drag forces on the substrate assembly and on the pad, the substrate assembly including a substrate, an endpoint layer over the substrate and a cover layer over the endpoint layer; transferring the lateral drag forces to at least one of a force detection and a force measuring assembly; sensing peak drag forces between a microelectronic substrate assembly and a polishing pad along a first lateral axis; processing the sensed peak drag forces to generate a force-time relationship between the peak drag forces and time; and estimating the status of a parameter of the plagiarizing process by analyzing changes in the force-time relationship, further comprising monitoring a change from a relatively flat slope of the force-time relationship to a decreasing slope.