Wafer dicing

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Wafer dicing is the process by which die are separated from a wafer of semiconductor following the processing of the wafer. The dicing process can be accomplished by scribing and breaking, by mechanical sawing (normally with a machine called a dicing saw) or by laser cutting. Following the dicing process the individual silicon chips are encapsulated into chip carriers which are then suitable for use in building electronic devices such as computers, etc.

During dicing, wafers are typically mounted on dicing tape which has a sticky backing that holds the wafer on a thin sheet metal frame. Once a wafer has been diced, the pieces left on the dicing tape are referred to as die, dice or dies. These will be packaged in a suitable package or placed directly on a printed circuit board substrate as a "bare die". The area that has been cut away are called die streets which are typically about 75 micrometres (0.003 inch) wide. Once a wafer has been diced, the die will stay on the dicing tape until they are extracted by die handling equipment, such as a die bonder or die sorter, further in the electronics assembly process.

The size of the die left on the tape may range from 35 mm (very large) to 0.5 mm square (very small). The die created may be any shape generated by straight lines, but they are typically rectangular or square shaped.

Materials diced include:

• Glass
• Alumina
• Silicon
• Gallium Arsenide (GaAs)
• Silicon on Sapphire (SoS)
• Ceramics
• Delicate compound semiconductors

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