DISCO Corporation, a semiconductor manufacturing equipment manufacturer, has developed the DDS2020 fully automatic die separator. Specifically, the new tool supports Φ200mm tape frames and achieves separation of hard materials, including silicon carbide (SiC) and sapphire.

Developmental Background

Stealth dicing^TM is a dicing process where a modified layer forms by focusing a laser beam inside the workpiece. After that, by applying stress externally, they separate into dies. It is possible to separate silicon wafers even with a relatively small amount of stress. Accordingly, the separation of the die is possible by simply expanding the dicing tape. On the other hand, materials that have high mechanical strength like SiC wafers widely used for power devices and sapphire wafers used for LED cannot be separated just by expansion. Thus, a breaking mechanism was necessary.

Mainly, DISCO’s DDS2020 is a die separator that achieves the separation of hard materials such as SiC and sapphire with a low load using a new breaking mechanism.

Specifically, the new die separator features a new breaking mechanism that achieves low load separation. It exhibits a lower load at 40% compared to the conventional breaking mechanism. Also, it features a breaking load measurement and graph display. Additionally, it detects unseparated die and improves the yield. It also features an automatic retry setting when unseparated dies are detected. Further, it does not require tape frame remounting^*1 for breaking. Also, it eliminates remounting work and reduces tape costs.

^*1: Conventionally, it requires remounting of Φ200mm wafers on a Φ300mm tape frame when performing breaking; this is no longer necessary.