Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) plays an important role in today's microelectronics industry. With its ability to achieve global planarization, its universality (material insensitivity), its applicability to multimaterial surfaces, and its relative cost-effectiveness, CMP is the ideal planarizing medium for the interlayered dielectrics and metal films used in silicon integrated circuit fabrication. But although the past decade has seen unprecedented research and development into CMP,...