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FWDT™ - Fantom Wafer Dicing Technology™

Wafers are most valuable at the dicing stage. Singulation and separation of a wafer into a semiconductor die is traditionally accomplished using a wet sawing operation or through the use of a scribe-and-break method, similar to the technique used in the cutting of glass. The equipment used to perform these operations varies from semi-automatic to fully automatic systems, ranging in price from $300K to $650K. FWDT™ enables quality cutting of assorted semiconductor materials such as silicon (Si), gallium arsenide (GaAs), germanium (Ge), indium phosphide (InP), silicon carbide (SiC), gallium nitride (GaN), gallium phosphide (GaP) and other compound materials, as well as low-k materials.

Significant Advantages of FTI’s Dicing and Separation Systems:

• Possibility of a near zero width cut allows wafer layout designers to reduce the width of the spacing between adjacent die on a wafer. The spacing is normally reserved to allow for the width of the saw used to cut the wafer. A reduction of the spacing width will result in an increase of the real estate available for die, resulting in a significant reduction of the cost per die.
• Elimination of particles, debris and cutting fluids converts wafer dicing and separation into a “clean” operation. The elimination of cleaning steps and processing of cutting fluids introduces additional cost savings into the overall component fabrication process.
• Elimination of wear items and consumables such as saw blades and scribes and the increased reliability associated with non-contact cutting, greatly decreases the cost of ownership of the equipment for the end-user. Enables high-yield dicing and scribing of new materials and higher yield on complicated layer stacks and thin wafers including wafers with low-k dielectric and wafers with brittle material layers such as glass or silicon.
• Dicing thin silicon with high mechanical integrity and no chips. Higher yield for thin wafers.
• No micro-cracks, fragmentation or chipping even for silicon below 100µm thick.
• Dicing wafers with thick polymer layers such as wafer scale packages and alpha barriers.
• Near zero or minimal material loss means more parts per wafer (210 instead of 120 with mechanical saw).
• High precision allows for smaller street width.
• Minimized Heat Affected Zone (HAZ).