Benzotriazole as a passivating agent during chemical mechanical planarization of Ni–P alloy substrates

Abstract

Abstract With the rapid increase of data storage density on computer hard disk drives (HDDs), the operation distance between read/write head and disk surface has fallen to just a few nanometers. Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) has been selected as the best process to produce high quality surface finish during the manufacturing of Ni–P alloy substrates for HDD applications. Herein we report, for the first time, the use of benzotriazole (BTA) as a passivating agent in CMP slurries to decrease the surface roughness ( R a ). Results show that the average R a of the polished surfaces is decreased to 0.2 nm in a 5 μm × 5 μm scan area with the adding of 2 mM BTA. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and electrochemical studies results further prove the interaction between BTA and Ni–P surface and the formation of an effective passivating layer on Cu in CMP slurries containing BTA.