Feasibility Analysis for Dry Plasma Scribe Lane Etch for Die Separation in Compound Semiconductors

摘要

Die separation processes for compound semiconductor devices are typically based on either diamond scribe and break techniques or on ganged sawing of the substrate using water-cooled saws. These mechanically dependent processes can suffer from several limitations, including overall throughput of the process (and throughput scalability as wafer sizes increase), physical damage to the dies incurred during the sawing or scribing operation, and the real estate cost of needing large scribe lines or streets for relatively small devices like LEDs. A plasma etch process has been developed for compound semiconductor device die separation, eliminating the real estate penalty, physical damage caused by mechanical processes, and has no scaling issues associated with larger wafer diameters. This article will report on the overall benefits of the plasma etch die separation processes, offer some cost of ownership comparisons, and show results from work performed for LED die separation using plasma etch.