Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is a process widely used for the manufacture of silicon integrated circuits. In this work, we measured the thickness of the slurry film between the wafer and the pad during polish while simultaneously measuring the frictional drag. All experiments are performed on a 1:2 scale laboratory tabletop rotary polisher with variable pad speed and wafer downforce control. Dual emission laser-induced fluorescence techniques optically measured the slurry film thickness through a dual-camera imaging system. The resulting data are discussed for wafers polished with a 3.1 wt % abrasive concentration slurry solution on Freudenberg's FX-9 polishing pads. It was found that the degree of surface curvature of the wafer substrate significantly influences the slurry film thickness and wafer drag, and therefore, the polish. The convex wafer shows the expected behavior of increased downforce reduces the slurry film thickness and increases the coefficient of friction. Further, as the pad speeds up, the slurry thickness increases and the friction decreases. The concave wafer shows no change in slurry film thickness and a decrease in the frictional coefficient with increasing downforce. Both the film thickness and frictional coefficient appear to decrease slightly with increasing pad speed. This difference between the two wafer shapes reflects the different fluid mechanics in each case. (C) 2004 The Electrochemical Society.