Prediction of the thickness for silicon wafers sawn by diamond wire saw

A higher yield and lower processing cost for the production of the silicon wafer can be realized by reducing the sliced thickness. However, a larger fracture probability is accompanied with the thinner silicon wafer, which limits the wafer thickness to be reduced. The contradiction between reducing wafer thickness and keeping a smaller fracture probability is an important problem for the industrial production of the silicon wafer. This paper investigates the influences of silicon wafer size and machining defects on the fracture probability in order to understand the essential relationship between damage information and fracture probability adequately. A theoretical model of the fracture probability for silicon wafer is proposed based on the probabilistic fracture mechanics to determine a proper thickness for wafers with different size. Furthermore, one method of predicting a proper thickness for silicon wafers sawn by diamond wire saw is developed. The thickness of 450-mm silicon wafer obtained by this proposed method is 920 µm, which is comparable with the value 925 µm specified by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor. The comparison of these two values reveals the feasibility and correctness of this proposed method. The proposed model in this paper can be used to evaluate the fracture probability and predict a proper thickness for silicon wafers with different size, which is benefit to optimize the processing technology and decrease the breakage ratio for the wafer production.