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Silicon (Si) is a fundamental material in the semiconductor industry. The advancement of semiconductor devices have offered convenience and comfort to our life. In order to raise productivity and economic efficiency, the semiconductor industry keeps looking for use of larger size Si wafers. The next generation wafer is expected to be sized as large as 450 mm in diameter. Many wafering processes including lapping, grinding and polishing have been studied and grinding technology stands out as the most promising process for large-size Si wafer manufacturing. In the current in-feed grinding scheme adopted for Si wafers, the wheel diameter used is generally equal to or larger than the wafer diameter. In turn, larger diameter wheels require larger size machine tools and production lines, which lead to increase in manufacturing costs. In this paper, both experiment and kinematical analysis have been carried out to investigate the feasibility of using small diameter grinding wheels to grind large size Si wafers, mainly focusing on the effects of wheel diameter on wafer geometry and surface roughness. The results show that both wheels generated a central convex profile on the wafer and the small wheel achieved a slightly better flatness than the large wheel. The surface roughness were similar one to another for most area of the wafer except the fringe around its edge. All these experimental results were predicable by the kinematic model established in this paper. Particularly, the kinematic analysis found that the cutting path made by small wheel with diameter equaling to the wafer radius was parallel each other at the fringe around wafer edge, which directly worsened the surface roughness.

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This paper reports our recent results on the diamond grinding process of single crystallized sapphire wafers. It was found that the diamond grains were severely dislodged at the wheel/ workpiece interface and the material was removed by a mixed process of both grinding and lapping. Grinding governed the wafer center while lapping dominated its fringe. By increasing the wheel speed, it was able to shift the dominant process from lapping to grinding, and achieve a better surface roughness. Nine diamond wheels varying in both concentration and bond material were tested in surface grinding of 6 inch sapphire wafer, to investigate the dynamic behavior of diamond grain in the grinding process and its resultant surface quality and productivity.