Silicon Wafer Thinning Process by Dry Etching with Low Roughness and High Uniformity

To overcome the issues of surface roughness, morphology and damage in the wafer thinning process, dry etching has been introduced to improve the surface quality of the ultra-thin wafers after mechanical grinding. At present, only non-Bosch process is reported for wafer thinning to our best knowledge. In this work, we demonstrate a time-multiplexed alternating thinning (TMAT) process for 12-inch silicon wafer thinning with higher uniformity and lower roughness compared with that of non-Bosch process. This method is operating convenient and might help obtain ultra-thin wafers with better quality in the semiconductor industry.