In this paper, we first studied the factors affecting the motor current (MC) signal, which was strongly affected by the systematic hardware noises depending on polishing such as pad conditioning and arm oscillation of platen and recipe, head motor. Next, we studied the end point detection (EPD) for the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process of shallow trench isolation (STI) with reverse moat structure. The MC signal showed a high amplitude peak in the fore part caused by the reverse meal. pattern. We also found that the EP could not be detected properly and reproducibly due to the pad conditioning effect, especially when conventional low selectivity slurry was used. Even when there was no pad conditioning effect, the EPD method could not be applied, since the measured end points were always the same due to the characteristics of the reverse moat structure with an open nitride layer,