Ultra-low damage processing of silicon wafer with an innovative and optimized nonwoven grind-polishing wheel

Silicon is essential to the production of integrated circuits and optical components. Grinding is a commonly used method of silicon surface machining, but it often leads to surface and subsurface damage. These damages need to be removed by subsequent processes, typically through polishing. The surface quality generated by grinding directly impacts the cost of polishing. To enhance the quality of the grinding surface and reduce the time and cost of polishing, a grind-polishing wheel with a different structure from the conventional diamond wheel was developed. This wheel utilized ultrafine zirconia with grit size of 200 nm as abrasives and nonwoven as substrate to support the abrasives. Furthermore, to optimize the wheel and achieve better grinding performance, various wheels with different abrasive mass fractions and elastic moduli were fabricated and grinding experiments were conducted. The surface integrity of processed silicon and the material removal rate (MRR) were used to compare the grinding performance of the various wheels. After optimization, the MRR of the grind-polishing wheel reaches its peak at 0.81 μm/min. The silicon wafer ground with the grind-polishing wheel exhibited a surface roughness Sa of 0.51 nm and a subsurface damage depth of 74 nm, which is close to the effect of chemical mechanical polishing processing. Compared to conventional diamond grinding wheel (mesh size of #5000), the optimized grind-polishing wheel is better suited for semi-fine finishing and can significantly reduce the cost and time of polishing.