Patent 7842169 was granted and assigned to Applied Materials on November, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method and apparatus for local polishing and deposition control in a process cell is generally provided. In one embodiment, an apparatus for electrochemically processing a substrate is provided that selectively polishes discrete conductive portions of a substrate by controlling an electrical bias profile across a processing area, thereby controlling processing rates between two or more conductive portions of the substrate.