All-Dry 300 mm Wafer Etching System

Featured at Semicon West 98

Tru-Si Technologies has announced that a version of its new Tru-Etch series of products will address the thin advanced packaging requirements of 300 mm wafer manufacturers. Called Tru-Etch 3000, the system is fully compliant with SEMIs 300 mm standards, and will offer Tru-Si's Atmospheric Downstream Plasma (ADP) and No-Touch wafer handling, while eliminating the need for frontside wafer protection and hazardous chemicals.

Mechanical grinding and wet etching are only effective in thinning wafers of 200 mm or less to the rigid specifications called for by advanced packages. Manufacturers of 300 mm wafers face a greater thinning challenge for two reasons: First, larger diameter wafers are much more susceptible to crack propagation imposed by backside damage and stress left after backgrinding. That may result in significant yield drop in new fabs. Second, chips based on 300 mm technology will have the same or even thinner chip thickness requirements, but there is currently no production equipment available for achieving even 200 mm wafer thickness requirements.

Current thinning technologies such as mechanical grinding and wet etching are only effective to thin wafers to below 200 microns in thickness. Ultra-thin applications, such as smart cards and cellular phones, will require chip thinness of 75 to 150 microns. According to Tru-Si, only 4 billion chips were thinned in 1995, accounting for 8.2% of all integrated circuit (IC) devices produced, but by the year 2000, the company estimates that 13 billion thinned chips will be needed, or 21.5% of all ICs.

Tru-Si Technologies, 657 N. Pastoria Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. Tel: 408-720-3333; Fax: 408-720-3334.