Abstract Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is an important step in the semiconductor technology. The surface of the wafer after CMP must be defect-free with low roughness. Polymer particles are one of the potential candidates for using as abrasive in CMP. Hence, studying mechanical properties of these abrasives is of great importance. In the current study, the size-dependence elastic modulus and hardness of polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles is investigated via molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The effect of strain on elastic modulus and hardness is examined and also the impact of strain rate on the mechanical response of PS nanoparticles during compression is studied. Additionally, the pop-in event during loading is precisely examined using volumetric analysis and shear strain distribution inside the nanoparticles is investigated. The results show that the elastic modulus increases linearly by decreasing the particle size while the hardness has a non-linear behavior. The predictions are compared with empirical measurements and good agreement is accomplished.

中文翻译：

---

单轴压缩试验下聚苯乙烯纳米颗粒力学性能的分子动力学模拟

摘要 化学机械平坦化（CMP）是半导体技术中的一个重要步骤。CMP后的晶圆表面必须无缺陷且粗糙度低。聚合物颗粒是在 CMP 中用作磨料的潜在候选者之一。因此，研究这些磨料的机械性能非常重要。在当前的研究中，通过分子动力学 (MD) 模拟研究了聚苯乙烯 (PS) 纳米粒子的尺寸依赖性弹性模量和硬度。研究了应变对弹性模量和硬度的影响，并研究了应变速率对压缩过程中 PS 纳米颗粒的机械响应的影响。此外，使用体积分析精确检查加载过程中的弹出事件，并研究纳米粒子内部的剪切应变分布。结果表明，弹性模量随着粒径的减小呈线性增加，而硬度呈非线性行为。将预测与经验测量值进行比较，并取得了良好的一致性。