Patent 7597608 was granted and assigned to Applied Materials on October, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method and apparatus for conditioning is provided. In one embodiment, a conditioning disk includes a plurality of conditioning elements each having an abrasive working surface, and a flexible foundation having the conditioning elements coupled thereto. The flexible foundation has physical properties that retain the working surfaces in a substantially coplanar orientation with respect to the pad surface.