Dicing of thin Si wafers with a picosecond laser ablation process

These days most common way to produce electrical components like LEDs, solar cells or transistors is a batch process. Therefore a lot of identical components are processed parallel on one big wafer and eventually each chip has to be singulated. Currently two dicing technologies have established themselves, which can be devided in mechanical blade sawing and laser based processes with nanosecond lasers. In contrast to these technologies, laser dicing with picosecond lasers offers fundamental advantages like smaller kerf width and marginal heat effected zones. In this paper the cutting process of Si wafers with ps lasers is investigated with regard to optimized process parameters like pulse energy, polarization and overlap. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the German Scientific Laser Society (WLT e.V.)