POTSDAM — The organization FuzeHub recently awarded $50,000 in grant funding to a Clarkson University department through its Jeff Lawrence Innovation Fund.

The Innovation Fund, consisting of more than $1 million annually, supports a set of activities designed to spur technology development and commercialization across New York State.

Clarkson University’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the company SMART Pad LLC was awarded $50,000 for the development of novel polishing pads for sub 7 nm semiconductor manufacturing.

Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) pad innovation has been driven by novel materials, geometries, micro-features to enable smaller features and complex integration schemes in the devices. However, devices at 7 nm node and beyond have more stringent requirements for the level of acceptable CMP-related defects that cannot be met by current pad technology.

In this project, Clarkson University and SMART PAD LLC aim to design the patterns of micro-features on the surface of the CMP pad to increase peripheral length and complicate the slurry flow-through with an increase of contact area between wafer and pad during the CMP process.

This will allow them to not only overcome the technical challenges of CMP in the semiconductor industry such as post-CMP wafer-level uniformity, chip-level topography, planarization efficiency, and defects, but also expand the semiconductor material supply chain in Upstate New York.

FuzeHub is a not-for-profit organization providing small to medium-sized manufacturers with guided access to an extensive network of industry experts, programs and resources to solve business growth challenges.