Surface conformable polishing mechanism, which means a uniform removal mechanism conforming to wafer thickness variation, was developed for chemical mechanical polishing. The polishing mechanism provides both global uniform removal regardless of wafer curvature and local planarization to protruding parts on a patterned surface. The improved triple-layer pad contributes to the uniform removal profile on the wafer surface with a long range of height variation. Selective polish function to planarize protruding parts was separated from the uniform polish function to conform to the surface height variation. The two opposite functions could be controlled by stiffness of a deflection film in a surface layer pad. Moreover, the wafer was held with the back-side surface flattened to exclude wafer curvature influence. Consequently, the developed polishing mechanism overcame the traditional problem on the wafer curvature, which has not been solved. Uniform polish with nonuniformity within the wafer of 1.25% was demonstrated using the wafer with a thickness variation of 3 mu m. In addition, local planarization was achieved in pattern features from 5 microns to 500 microns.