ELID Grinding for Ultra Thin Silicon Wafer

Abstract

For grinding the ultra thin wafer, an ELID-grinder for substrates had developed. In this study, the authors thus attempted the mirror surface grinding of thin silicon wafer by the electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) grinding method, which has been successfully used to obtain efficient and high quality ground surfaces of brittle materials. In the experiments, #2000 and #4000 cast bonded diamond wheels were used to investigate the ELID grinding characteristics of silicon. The results of the experiments showed that the ground surface roughness improves as the abrasive diameter becomes smaller, and a high quality-grinding surface of 7.0 nm Ra can be achieved with the #4000 wheel, and good surface flatness can be obtain.