Surface Grinding in Silicon Wafer Manufacturing

Silicon wafers are used for production of most microchips. Various processes are needed to transform a silicon crystal ingot into wafers. As one of such processes, surface grinding possesses the great potential of producing silicon wafers with lower cost and better quality comparing with its counterparts (lapping for wiresawn wafers and polishing for etched wafers). In order to fully utilize the potential of surface grinding, however, some technical obstacles will have to be overcome. This paper will present these obstacles as well as some approaches to attack them.