Dicing Before Grinding

DBG

Overview of Dicing Before Grinding (DBG) Process

In the existing manufacturing and packaging processes of silicon semiconductors, the wafer is first thinned by grinding (processing using a grinding wheel) and then the die are separated by dicing (processing using a blade). Since Φ300 mm wafers have become mainstream for semiconductor manufacturing and demand for thinner wafers is increasingly growing to achieve high profiling and high integration, the risk of wafer-level breakage during grinding has become a challenge.

The Dicing Before Grinding (DBG) process has been developed in order to solve this kind of issue. In DBG, first a half-cut is performed on the wafer with a dicing saw. Then, wafer thinning and die separation are performed at the same time during grinding. Because the thinned wafers are never transferred in DBG wafer-level breakage is greatly reduced.

In addition, the dicing process is completed only by performing a half-cut (inserting grooves), which can potentially improve the feed speed and reduce backside chipping (small chipping on the backside of the die). As for memory devices with multiple die laminated (die stacking) for the purpose of high integration (e.g. flash memory), die attach film (DAF) might be attached to the wafer backside as a bonding material. This kind of process may also use a laser saw to cut the DAF.