An apparatus for chemical mechanical polishing includes a platen having a surface to support a polishing pad, a carrier head to hold a substrate against a polishing surface of the polishing pad, a pad conditioner to hold a conditioning disk against the polishing surface, an in-situ polishing pad thickness monitoring system, and a controller. The controller is configured to store data associating each of a plurality of conditioner disk products with a respective threshold value, receive an input selecting a conditioner disk product from the plurality of conditioner disk products, determine a particular threshold value associated with the selected conditioner disk product, receive a signal from the monitoring system, generate a measure of a pad cut rate from the signal, and generate an alert if the pad cut rate falls beyond the particular threshold value.

A conditioner of a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) apparatus includes a conditioning part to polish a polishing pad, an arm to rotate the conditioning part, and a flexible connector connecting the conditioning part with the arm, the flexible connector being moveable to allow relative movements of the conditioning part with respect to the arm.

A chemical mechanical polishing apparatus includes a platen to support a polishing pad, the platen having a recess, a flexible membrane in the recess, and an in-situ vibration monitoring system to generate a signal. The in-situ acoustic monitoring system includes a vibration sensor supported by the flexible membrane and positioned to couple to an underside of the polishing pad.

An apparatus for chemical mechanical polishing includes a support for a polishing pad having a polishing surface, and an electromagnetic induction monitoring system to generate a magnetic field to monitor a substrate being polished by the polishing pad. The electromagnetic induction monitoring system includes a core and a coil wound around a portion of the core. The core includes a back portion, a center post extending from the back portion in a first direction normal to the polishing surface, and an annular rim extending from the back portion in parallel with the center post and surrounding and spaced apart from the center post by a gap. A width of the gap is less than a width of the center post, and a surface area of a top surface of the annular rim is at least two times greater than a surface area of a top surface of the center post.

Data received from an in-situ monitoring system includes, for each scan of a sensor, a plurality of measured signal values for a plurality of different locations on a layer. A thickness of a polishing pad is determined based on the data from the in-situ monitoring system. For each scan, a portion of the measured signal values are adjusted based on the thickness of the polishing pad. For each scan of the plurality of scans and each location of the plurality of different locations, a value is generated representing a thickness of the layer at the location. This includes processing the adjusted signal values using one or more processors configured by machine learning. A polishing endpoint is detected or a polishing parameter is modified based on the values representing the thicknesses at the plurality of different locations.

A polishing apparatus capable of obtaining a desired film thickness profile is disclosed. The polishing apparatus includes: a polishing unit; a film thickness measuring device for measuring a film thickness profile of a substrate; and a controller for controlling at least operations of the polishing unit and the film thickness measuring device. The controller stores in advance a response model which is created by taking into consideration variation in an amount of polishing between monitored areas of the substrate due to variations in a pressure of a pressurized fluid supplied to each of pressure chambers. Further, the controller obtains a film thickness profile of the substrate before polishing by use of a film thickness measuring device, and causes the substrate to be polished with an optimized polishing recipe created based on the response model and a target polishing amount, which is a difference between the film thickness profile of the substrate before polishing and the target film thickness of the substrate. A next substrate is polished with a new optimized polishing recipe which is created based on a target polishing amount of the next substrate and a response model corrected by use of the optimized polishing recipe and film thickness profiles of the substrate before and after polishing.

An end effector for a robotic sanding system includes a sanding head including a sander configured to sand a surface of a workpiece. A motor is operatively coupled to the sander. The motor is configured to rotate the sander to sand the surface of the workpiece. The motor includes a first central longitudinal axis. A coupler is configured to removably secure the end effector to an attachment interface of an arm of the robotic sanding system. The coupler includes a second central longitudinal axis. The first central longitudinal axis is offset from the second central longitudinal axis. One or more sensors are coupled to the sanding head. The one or more sensors are configured to detect presence of a metal within the predefined range.

Provided is a substrate processing apparatus. The substrate processing apparatus comprises a polishing table; a polishing pad disposed on an upper surface of the polishing table; a conditioner including a conditioner head, a disk holder movably coupled to the conditioner head in a vertical direction, and a conditioning disk mounted to the disk holder and in contact with the polishing pad; and a thickness measuring unit of obtaining the thickness of the polishing pad from the relative moving distance of the disk holder with respect to the conditioner head, wherein the information of the relative moving distance is received from sensing unit.

Data received from an in-situ monitoring system includes, for each scan of a sensor, a plurality of measured signal values for a plurality of different locations on a layer. A thickness of a polishing pad is determined based on the data from the in-situ monitoring system. For each scan, a portion of the measured signal values are adjusted based on the thickness of the polishing pad. For each scan of the plurality of scans and each location of the plurality of different locations, a value is generated representing a thickness of the layer at the location. This includes processing the adjusted signal values using one or more processors configured by machine learning. A polishing endpoint is detected or a polishing parameter is modified based on the values representing the thicknesses at the plurality of different locations.

A polishing method capable of improving a spatial resolution of a film-thickness measurement without changing a measuring cycle of a film-thickness sensor and without increasing an amount of measurement data is disclosed. The polishing method includes: rotating a first film-thickness sensor and a second film-thickness sensor together with a polishing table, the first film-thickness sensor and the second film-thickness sensor being located at the same distance from a center of the polishing table; causing the first film-thickness sensor and the second film-thickness sensor to generate signal values indicating film thicknesses at measurement points on a surface of a substrate, while a polishing head is pressing the substrate against a polishing pad on the rotating polishing table, the measurement points being located at different distances from a center of the substrate; and controlling polishing pressure applied from the polishing head to the substrate based on the signal values generated by the first film-thickness sensor and the second film-thickness sensor.