In recent years a technology for a high quality separation of nonmetallic materials into chips using a surface ("blind") microcrack attracted considerable attention in the electronic industry. In this method a wafer is positioned on the translated X-Y table and is heated by a laser beam up to a temperature of the order of 300-400℃. The wafer is then cooled by an air-water spray, and a surface microcrack is formed due to relaxation of the thermal stresses. The initial microcrack with a depth of the order of several hundred microns then propagates in a subsurface region of a wafer and follows the path of the laser beam. Theoretical modeling based on the solution of the equations of thermal elasticity was performed to determine the distributions of temperature and thermal stresses that cause formation of an "edge" microcrack (at the edge of a wafer) followed by its transformation into a surface microcrack. The results of thermal stresses analysis are in an agreement with experimental observations.
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