Spts Technologies Limited

Oliver James Ansell

David Andrew Tossell

Gautham Ragunathan

Janet Hopkins

Martin Hanicinec

Paul G Bennett

Brian Kiernan

Anthony Barrass

Harry Gordon-Moys

Maxime Varvara

Toby Jeffrey

A semiconductor wafer dicing process is disclosed for dicing a wafer into individual dies, each die comprising one integrated circuit. The process comprises: disposing a coating upon the wafer; removing at least a portion of the coating to expose regions of the wafer, along which the wafer is to be diced, to form a workpiece; disposing the workpiece upon a platen within a processing chamber; plasma treating the workpiece with a set of plasma treatment conditions to etch a portion of the exposed regions of the wafer to form a wafer groove which extends laterally beneath the coating to form an undercut; and plasma etching the workpiece with a set of plasma etch conditions, which are different to the plasma treatment conditions, to etch through the wafer and dice the wafer along the wafer groove.

Semiconductor wafer dicing process

An apparatus is for plasma dicing a semiconductor substrate of the type forming part of a workpiece, the workpiece further including a carrier sheet on a frame member, where the carrier sheet carries the semiconductor substrate. The apparatus includes a chamber, a plasma production device configured to produce a plasma within the chamber suitable for dicing the semiconductor substrate, a workpiece support located in the chamber for supporting the workpiece through contact with the carrier sheet, and a frame cover element configured to, in use, contact the frame member thereby clamping the carrier sheet against an auxiliary element disposed in the chamber.

Apparatus for plasma dicing

A white light illumination source can illuminate a region of a substrate to be plasma etched with an incident light beam. A camera takes successive images of the region being illuminated during a plasma etch process. Image processing techniques can be applied to the images so as to identify a location of at least one feature on the substrate and to measure a reflectivity signal at the location. The plasma etch process can be modified in response to the measured reflectivity signal at the location.

Apparatus and method

A method is for plasma etching one or more dicing lanes in a silicon substrate having a backside metal layer attached thereto. The method includes performing a main etch using a cyclical plasma etch process in which a deposition step and an etch step are alternately repeated to produce dicing lanes having scalloped sidewalls, and switching to performing a secondary etch using a cyclical plasma etch process in which a deposition step and an etch step are alternately repeated until the backside metal layer is reached. The amount of silicon removed in one etch step during the secondary etch is half or less than half of the amount of silicon removed in one etch step during the main etch.

Methods of plasma etching and plasma dicing

A method is for detecting a condition associated with a final phase of a plasma dicing process. The method includes providing a non-metallic substrate having a plurality of dicing lanes defined thereon, plasma etching through the substrate along the dicing lanes, wherein during the plasma etching infrared emission emanating from at least a portion of the dicing lanes is monitored so that an increase in infrared emission from the dicing lanes is observed as the final phase of the plasma dicing operation is entered, and detecting the condition associated with the final phase of the plasma dicing from the monitored infrared emission.

Method of detecting a condition

A method is for etching the whole width of a substrate to expose buried features. The method includes etching a face of a substrate across its width to achieve substantially uniform removal of material; illuminating the etched face during the etch process; applying edge detection techniques to light reflected or scattered from the face to detect the appearances of buried features; and modifying the etch in response to the detection of the buried feature. An etching apparatus for etching substrate across its width to expose buried is also disclosed.

Etching apparatus and methods

Apparatus for chemically etching a workpiece includes a chamber for receiving a process gas and having a pumping port for extracting exhaust gases, and a workpiece support located in the chamber upstream of the pumping port. The chamber further includes a sub-chamber located upstream of the pumping port and downstream of the workpiece support, and the sub-chamber includes a window and an excitation source, adjacent the window, for creating a plasma in a sample of the exhaust gases to create an optical emission which can be monitored through the window.

Apparatus for chemically etching a workpiece

A method of etching the whole width of a substrate to expose buried features is disclosed. The method includes etching a face of a substrate across its width to achieve substantially uniform removal of material; illuminating the etched face during the etch process; applying edge detection techniques to light reflected or scattered from the face to detect the appearances of buried features; and modifying the etch in response to the detection of the buried feature. An etching apparatus for etching substrate across its width to expose buried is also disclosed.

Growing community of inventors

Berkeley, United Kingdom

Oliver James Ansell