Effect of Dicing Technique on the Fracture Strength of Si Dies With Emphasis on Multimodal Failure Distribution

Abstract

The ball-on-ring (BOR) and three-point bending (3PB) tests were used in this paper to characterize the effect of the dicing process on the fracture strength of Si dies. Dies prepared by blade- and laser-dicing processes were studied. The edge-initiated fracture was distinguished from the surface-initiated fracture by fractographic analysis. The fracture-strength distributions related to surface flaws in the 3PB test, as well as the BOR test, were consistent regardless of the dicing process. For the edge-defect-induced failure mode, on the other hand, blade-sawn dies showed wider spread distribution than laser-sawn dies. It was due to the scattered nature in size and location of the edge flaws induced by blade dicing. Laser-sawn dies showed a tighter distribution of die strength, although the average die strength was slightly lower than that of blade-sawn dies. This paper has successfully demonstrated that the die failure caused by edge defects can be deconvoluted from the 3PB test data by using fractographic observation.