and is then recycled back to a carbon dioxide compressor for reuse the chemical is soluble or insoluble in carbon dioxide and is not damaging to semiconductor device materials the high solvency and solubilizing ability of the supercritical carbon dioxide makes this method fast safe and very quick high turbulence at wafer surface features in conjunction with hyper efficient mass transport of a chemical co solvent package can clean the wafer surface in less than five minutes cmp residue of cmp chemicals and abrasive particles is effectively removed without direct mechanical contact in contrast to current methods another advantage of the present invention is that the wafer surface contains fewer defects as compared to mechanical scrubber methods the solvency of supercritical carbon dioxide increases with pressure diffusivity and viscosity at or above a critical point of carbon dioxide remains similar to that of a gas phase because density above the critical point of the carbon dioxide is nearly equal to that of a liquid state the supercritical carbon dioxide carries the chemical onto the wafer surface and cleans sub micron surface features of a modern semiconductor device in the present invention the supercritical carbon dioxide also functions to carry away the cmp residue including the cmp chemicals and abrasive particles from the sub micron surface features of the modem semiconductor device thus a small amount of the chemical mixed with the supercritical carbon dioxide performs the post cmp cleaning process and also cleans away any remaining unwanted chemicals and the cmp residue the preferred embodiment of the post cmp cleaning process of the present invention is illustrated in.