Novel Backend Singulation Techniques to Enable Commercialization of Optical MEMS

Novel Backend Singulation Techniques to Enable Commercialization of Optical MEMS Jim Aberson 1 , Pierre Cusin 1 , James Wylde 2 , Ryan Hickey 2 , Heiko Fettig 2 MEMS chips that are to be implemented into higher-level functional modules are typically composed of exposed structures that may be vulnerable to conventional wafer and die handling. Thus, successful commercialization of such components requires special and low-cost approaches to separate individual die from wafers and to handle them. In this paper, a dedicated snapping process is described and used for MEMS wafer dicing as a replacement for standard sawing strategies, which are unsuitable for this category of non-encapsulated Optical MEMS devices. The developed process allows successful low-cost, high-yield singulation of on-wafer tested chips in a simple, harmless and clean manner with standard pick-and-place semiconductor equipment. 1 Colibrys SA, 83 Rue Maladiere, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, CH-2007, +1 919 467-3402, [email protected] 2 Bookham Technology, 3500 Carling Ave, Ottawa, ON Canada, +1 613 765 3023, [email protected] Proceedings of the International Conference on MEMS, NANO and Smart Systems (ICMENS’03) 0-7695-1947-4/03 $17.00 © 2003 IEEE