Semiconductors are very sensitive to imperfections. Even a tiny flaw can impact performance, so polishing them is crucial. And when it comes to lacking defects, a double side polish wafer offers the highest quality.
When we polish the wafer, we’re removing any defects that is likely going to make the wafer unusable. This ensures that it’s ready to be used in a device. However, the wafer cleaning process afterwards is also crucial to ensuring a wafer has no contaminants. Let’s explore why.
For wafers intended for memory chips and wafers in microprocessors, polishing plays an important role in achieving a mirrorlike surface and the required flatness for these types of applications.
After polishing, there’s another critical that needs to be take, though, for removing residues and minimizing defects - the cleaning. Here’s why this part of the procedure looks like:
Lastly, cleaned wafers are inspected. If there are any areas with imperfections or that need rework, a new polishing is conducted before proceeding.
Even after a double side polishing, wafers may have some remaining imperfections. That’s why the cleaning step is crucial. Afterwards, a detailed quality control is conducted, ensuring that the polished wafer is in top condition. If the standards aren’t met, then it will be sent back to polishing and so on, as many times as necessary to ensure a high-quality semiconductor.
If you’d like to learn more about our wafer’s quality controls, give us a call!
