Make the difference in SiC wafering

Carefully selected diamond suspensions together with a precisely tailored process flow can reduce the cost per wafer produced thanks to a decreased process time and reduced reject rate.

Semiconducters are on everyone's lips. Why? Because they are an essential component of high-performance electronic devices enabling advances in communications, computing, healthcare, military systems, transportation, clean energy, and countless other applications.

Macro of an SiC wafer. Each square is a chip with microscopic transistors and circuits. Wafers like this one are diced into individual chips to be used in processors powering high-performance electronic devices like computers.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is the semiconductor material that sets new standards in industrial development for high-performance electronics. Due to its extreme hardness of around 2600 Vickers and its monocrystalline lattice structure, SiC can only be processed with diamond. With our newly developed SiC-specific diamond products, we accompany all central processing steps.

Steps in SiC wafer processing.

Starting with wire-saw lapping, the processing of SiC wafers can be an extremely cost-intensive exercise. With Pureon's new, high-quality suspensions formulated particularly for this purpose, the process can be designed and carried out extremely efficiently with outstanding results in terms of wafer geometry and surface quality, even on 6-inch wafers. The use of loose abrasives reduces sub-surface damage, which helps to minimize material waste and decreases the time and cost for post-processing. In addition to the high material removal rates, low bow, warp and TTV can be achieved. This new process is highly economical and adaptable to customer specifications.

Process illustration SiC multi-wire sawing

Thanks to this good pre-machining, the subsequent, double-sided lapping/polishing machining process with an equally new and specific Pureon suspension can achieve surface qualities of better than Ra = 0.001 micron. In addition, this shortens the processing time of the final chemical polishing operation.

Please refer to the download section below for case studies demonstrating the improved process in more detail.