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Applications of Dry Process Dicing™ A number of scribe tool configurations are available for dry process dicing, from high precision and repeatability to R&D applications. Configurations for general use have four lapped vees for heel scribing and four lapped cutting edges for toe scribing. More narrowly angled facets are available for GaAs, silicon, and silicon-on-insulator substrates. In addition, indium phosphide and other III-V laser bars or diodes require the use of a 90 degree roof angle with 2 cutting edges for toe scribing between protrusions. Being on the forefront of dry process dicing technology, Dynatex has extensive experience in providing solutions to IC and laser manufacturers. Dynatex's Solutions Team sees each customer's scribe and break application as unique. The Team shares some applications with us in this article. Goal #1: Eliminating Deionized (DI) Water from Wafer Die Separation As an alternative to wet saw wafer die separation, dry dicing does not require the use of deionized water. This is a real advantage to Christie Schilling, Process Engineer, at BioStar, Inc. BioStar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thermo BioAnalysis Corporation, currently manufactures and sells diagnostic tests for the detection of bacteria and viruses. BioStar products are based on a proprietary and fundamental breakthrough technology called Optical ImmunoAssay (OIA®). OIA-based diagnostic tests use silicon wafers coated with various proprietary materials. Biostar uses Dynatex Scriber/Breakers to dice wafers into small die. According to Schilling, Dynatex is about the only manufacturer that meets their requirements, because the process doesn't interfere with surfaces. She says, "The process used to break wafers is the best for our needs. That's really the only way." Goal #2: Decreasing Street Sizes of Existing Wafers Dry process dicing enables manufacturers to reduce street width from 50 microns to 20 microns, yielding up to a 10% increase in the number of die per wafer. Mani Govindasamy, Assembly Front-end Process Engineering Manager, at Amkor uses the Dynatex Scriber/Breaker, DXE™ expander, hoop sets and Mylar™ overlays for scribe and break. Amkor is a respected supplier of superior products and service in the semiconductor fabrication and OEM electronic manufacturing industry with customers including: Motorola, VLSI, IBM, AT&T, ST Microelectronics, Toshiba, Microchip, Philips, Delco and a host of others. Scribe and break allowed narrower streets in the GaAs substrate, offered the highest throughput of any process to separate GaAs wafer into individual die and did not require an expensive water based cooling system. Goal #3: Dicing Difficult-to-Manage Substrates III-V substrates like gallium arsenide (GaAs), warped or finely ground silicon wafers, silicon-on-insulator, and indium phosphide produce fragile wafers. For producing chips from these wafers, scribe and break techniques are more environmentally friendly and more efficient than dicing saws. Ray Gruszka, DMTS Engineer, at Lucent Microelectronics processes and separates indium phosphide semiconductor components. Lucent Microelectronics designs and manufactures a variety of products including integrated circuits and optoelectronic components for the computer and communications industries. Lucent uses the Dynatex scriber/breaker, expander and hoops. Goal #4: Dicing in High Volume to Increase Throughput Processors of III-V compounds find an advantage in the Dynatex production-quality dry process dicing systems. For both 4 inch diameter and 6 inch diameter wafer capacity, the equipment is fully programmable and designed for increased yield and high processing speeds. The Scriber/Breaker can scribe up to 3" per second and is capable of meeting the yield demands of extremely high speed production environments. The world's only 6" alternative to saw dicing for silicon and GaAs applications, the GS-150, can scribe up to 10" per second. With a Windows® NT™ operating environment, it provides fully programmable software and a user-friendly operator interface. Dan Halpin of Skyworks Solutions (formerly Conexant), a top-ten North American semiconductor company focused exclusively on providing semiconductor products for communications electronics, uses the Dynatex scriber/breaker on finely ground, thin wafers. He says, "Our wafers are difficult to process because of grinding them to 5 mil thickness - this makes them harder to scribe and break than other wafers." For high production yields, it was imperative that these hard-to-process wafers used a scribe and break technique. Throughput
is also of prime importance to Fred Nightser, Senior Laser Process Engineer,
at Teccor Electronics, a Siebe plc company. Teccor is a global supplier
of thyristor semiconductors. Using high speed laser scriber systems processing
26,000 wafers a month, Nightser needed high speed, automated breaker systems
to complete the wafer dicing operation. The Dynatex Scriber/Breaker has met these
needs and demonstrated a high degree of reliability by consistently performing
24 hours a day in this brutal production environment. |
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