Experimental study of lapping using mixed abrasive grits

Wafers made of materials such as silicon, III-V and II-VI compounds, and optoelectronic materials, require high-degree of surface quality in order to increase the yield in micro-electronics fabrication to produce IC chips and devices. Measures of properties of surface quality of wafers include: nanotopography, surface morphology, global planarization, total thickness variation (TTV) and warp. Due to the reduction of feature size in micro-electronics fabrication, the requirements of such properties become more and more stringent. To meet such requirements, the wafer manufacturing processes of brittle semiconductor materials, such as slicing, lapping, grinding, and polishing have been continually improved. In this paper, the lapping process of wafer surface treatment is studied with experimental results of surface roughness and material removal rate. In order to improve the performance of lapping process, effects of mixed abrasive grits in the slurry of the free abrasive machining (FAM) processes are studied using a single-sided wafer-lapping machine. Under the same slurry density, experiments employing different mixing ratios of large and small abrasive grits, and various normal loadings on the wafer surface applied through a jig are conducted for parameter study. With various mixing ratios and loadings, observations and measurements such as the total amount of material removed, material removal rate, surface roughness, and relative angular velocity are presented and discussed in this paper. The experiments show that the half-half mixing ratio of abrasives removes more material than other mixing ratios under the same conditions, but with a higher surface roughness. The results of this study can provide a good reference to the FAM processes that practitioners use today by exploiting different mixing ratios and loadings of abrasive slurry in the manufacturing processes.