Day: 12 December 2023

DISCO Corporation has newly developed the following dicing blades: ZHSR Series, TM22 Series, and BH23 Series, and the following dry polishing wheel: DPEG Series SZ Type for the semiconductor and electronic components market. These products are being exhibited at SEMICON Japan 2023 (December 13–15, Tokyo Big Site).

ZHSR Series: Hub Blade for Silicon Wafer Dicing

With the recent progress in miniaturization within the semiconductor manufacturing process (e.g., logic memory), thorough countermeasures against static electricity are required. Highly pure water is used as a coolant and for cleaning during the wafer dicing process, but since highly pure water is nonconductive, a common countermeasure is to dissolve CO₂ to provide conductivity. However, if the concentration of CO₂ in the highly pure water is increased to suppress the amount of static electricity, corrosion will occur in electroformed blades.The ZHSR Series has achieved improved corrosion resistance while maintaining high processing quality.

Features:

• Newly developed bond material
  • Significantly improved corrosion resistance
  • Improves yield by reducing wavy cutting and breakage due to blade tapering
  • Promotes self sharpening and achieves high-quality processing

TM22 Series: High-Rigidity Metal Bond Blade

For passive components, such as condensers, die shape and volume after dicing affect product performance. Therefore, high dimensional accuracy is required from processing. As a successor to the TM11 Series, the TM22 Series can achieve high-precision processing with its increased bond strength and can contribute to improved productivity.

Features:

• Newly developed bond with increased strength
  • Improves die dimensional accuracy after processing
  • Improves yield by reducing wavy cutting and breakage due to blade tapering

BH23 Series: Metal/Resin Bond Blade Compatible with ABC (Automatic Blade Changer)

ABC is a function that automatically replaces hub blades during silicon wafer dicing. This function is recognized for its contributions in preventing operator error and improving operation rate. This automation is currently also in demand for metal/resin bond blades used to dice electronic components and packaging. With an aluminum hub bonded to its metal/resin blades, the BH23 Series is compatible with ABC, thus promoting automation.

Features:

• Supports metal, resin, and other bonds
• Individual blade information engraved to hub as 2D code
  • Automatically sends actual measurement values for blade exposure and thickness to equipment
  • Prevents human error such as blade mounting errors and/or value input errors
  • Automatically records serial number of blades used, ensuring traceability
• Reduces downtime caused by wait for operator to start operation
  • Improves equipment operation rate

DPEG Series SZ Type: Gettering DP Wheel for Silicon Wafers

In order to increase the strength of the wafer in silicon wafer thinning, undulations on the grinding surface need to be removed. However, if undulations are completely removed, the gettering effect is lost, leading to wafer property errors due to heavy metal contamination. The DPEG Series SZ Type has been newly added to the gettering DP wheel lineup for solving this issue. The DPEG Series SZ Type can achieve higher die strength than the conventional product while maintaining the gettering effect.

Features:

• Improved pad composition
  • Improves die strength by approx. 1.3 times while maintaining gettering effect (when compared with conventional product)

Original – DISCO

DISCO Corporation has developed DAG811, which has improved usability and a space-saving footprint, as the successor to DAG810, an automatic grinder that has responded to a wide range of needs and has been well received for many years. This equipment is being exhibited at SEMICON Japan 2023 (December 13-15, Tokyo Big Site).

Since its release in 2002, DAG810 has been used for R&D and semi-mass production in a wide range of fields such as semiconductors, electronic components, and optical components. In response to the increasing demand related to applications, DAG811 was developed upon renewing the equipment specifications such as improving the operability and making it compact.

By optimizing the processing point, this equipment also meets the grinding needs of compound semiconductors such as SiC and GaN used in power devices, for which demands are increasing.

Features

Improved Usability

• Easier wheel replacement with an optimized internal layout
• Enlarged monitor size from 10.4 inches (existing model) to 15 inches
  ・A new GUI (Graphical User Interface) has been adopted for improved operability

Space-saving Design

• Footprint reduced by over 12% compared to the existing model
  ・With a footprint of approx. 0.9m², it is one of the world’s smallest 1 spindle, 1 chuck table grinders (compatible with Φ8-inch wafers)

Supports a Wide Range of Grinding Demands

• Supports two types of grinding methods, in-feed grinding and creep-feed grinding
  Easy switching between the methods using the touch panel
• Achieves good grinding results for compound semiconductors as well due to optimization of the processing point

Original – DISCO

DISCO Corporation has developed DDS2020, a fully automatic die separator that supports Φ200 mm tape frames and achieves separation of hard materials including SiC and sapphire. This equipment is being exhibited at SEMICON Japan 2023 (December 13-15, Tokyo Big Site).

Stealth dicing^TM is a dicing process where a modified layer is formed by focusing a laser beam inside the workpiece, following which stress is applied externally to separate it into die. As silicon wafers can be separated with a relatively small amount of stress, the die can be separated by simply expanding the dicing tape. On the other hand, materials that have high mechanical strength like SiC wafers that are widely used for power devices and sapphire wafers used for LED cannot be separated just by expansion. Thus, a breaking mechanism was necessary.

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

Features

• New breaking mechanism that achieves low load separation
  • Load decreased by 40% compared to the conventional breaking mechanism
• Breaking load measurement and graph display
  • Detects unseparated die and improves the yieldAutomatic retry setting when unseparated die are detected is also available
• Tape frame remounting for breaking is no longer necessary
  • Eliminates remounting work and reduces tape costs

Original – DISCO