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Evaluation of polishing-induced subsurface damage based on residual stress distribution via measured global surface deformation for thinned silicon wafers

Polishing is widely used to obtain smooth thinned wafer surfaces and the process-induced subsurface damage is often evaluated by scanning electron microscope or transmission electron microscope images. However, the difference of microscope images is very slight and subtle between wafers and affected by the location selection of the measured points. In this study, we explored the method of evaluating the polishing-induced subsurface damage based on residual stress distribution via measured global surface deformation. The surface deformation was first measured and then the polishing-induced residual stress distribution was calculated from the surface topography data by solving the system of linear equations. The polishing-induced subsurface damage could be evaluated independent of the dimension of the silicon wafer by the proposed method. How the thinned silicon wafer was supported during measurement process greatly affected polishing-induced wafer deformation and gravity-induced deformation should be separated from the measured data. Regularization method should be introduced in the calculation of residual stress to reduce the errors caused by the multi-collinearity of the system of linear equations. The calculated residual stress distribution was found to be an obvious centrosymmetric figure and exhibited a quasi-axisymmetric pattern with the axis of symmetry correlated with certain crystalline directions, indicating the effect of anisotropy of monocrystalline silicon in the polishing process. The proposed method could also be used in the evaluation of polishing-induced subsurface damage of other large and thin substrate plates.