An accelerated method for diamond fracture characterization in chemical mechanical planarization processes
was developed and several practice examples were described showing that the accelerated fracture test was appropriate
for differentiating among typical diamond conditioner disks. First, the top ten aggressive diamonds for
each of the three conditioner disks tested were identified and imaged using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Next, the three diskswere subjected to a 30-min accelerated fracture test against an aluminumplate on an Araca
APD-800 polisher. SEM images were taken again on the same ten most aggressive diamonds. Even though the
accelerated fracture test was designed to be analogous to conventional pad conditioning, significant changes
to the diamonds could be seen only after 30 min of conditioning. Image analysis demonstrated that diamond
fracture occurred in all three cases, but to very different extents.