Wafer dicing is probably the processes popular in the semiconductor industry. It is just a way of separating a die from the wafer of semiconductor which is accomplished using several methods like scribing and breaking, by mechanical sawing, or by laser cutting. Using wafer dicing machine, wafers are cut into individual semiconductor chips, by using dicing blades.
‘Wafer dicing methods’
Scribing and breaking – usually is done in a substrate made of a brittle material by which good-quality cutting surface of the substrate can be achieved without any defects such as for example chippings on the substrate. This technique of semiconductor wafer separation is achieved by creating a stress in the wafer and fracturing the wafer along the stress line. A line must be created in the wafer surface along the street where the break is desired.
Tungsten D20 – the process is done utilizing a mechanical machine called dicing saw; this method is used for a micro electro-mechanical system semiconductor devices. While you may still find manufacturers that utilize this method, it is slowly getting unpopular due to several disadvantages – the procedure is slow, contaminant-laden, and influenced by regular shapes.
Laser cutting – a new and much more effective technology to cut semiconductor materials; the process works by directing the output of a high-power laser at the material to be cut. This process burns or vaporizes away the unwanted parts, leaving an advantage with a high-quality surface finish.
‘Dicing blades’
As stated above, dicing blades are employed and are an important element for the dicing process. There are numerous types of dicing blades plus some of them are the following:
Hubbed Nickel Bonded Blades – that is used to cut Silicon and III-V materials. This blade is ultra-thin and created using a special electrodepositing technique to hold the cutting diamonds in a nickel alloy matrix.
Hubbed Resin Bonded Blades – with this type of blade, you don’t have to buy expensive flanges because the resinoid blade is permanently mounted to its hub. As opposed to flanges, once the blade is dressed, it is usually detached and reattached again without going through the dressing process.
Hubless Resin Bonden Blades – this sort of dicing blade performs extremely well on materials like ceramic, quartz, sapphire and glass. This may give minimum chipping and superior finish.
Metal Sintered Dicing Blades – this can be a type of blade that is created by capturing diamonds in a metal binder using sintering process – this can be a very rigid blade and contains a very low wear rates. These properties offer the capability to create very straight cuts even when subjected to large exposures.