Wafer Processing Backend

Atomica’s backend processing capabilities, including CMP, wafer thinning, and dicing, are precisely tailored to meet diverse customer demands, ensuring optimal device performance and seamless integration into advanced packaging solutions

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Atomica’s backend wafer processing capabilities—Wafer Thinning, Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP), and Wafer Dicing—are essential for optimizing device profiles and preparing wafers for advanced packaging. Wafer thinning reduces the overall profile and exposes embedded materials, with precise control over thickness and surface finish to meet specific form factor requirements. CMP complements this by planarizing and polishing surfaces, ensuring a smooth transition to front-end processing. For final preparation, our Wafer Dicing services, available for 6” and 8” wafers, provide die singulation with options like Pad Reveal for wafer-level testing, delivering dies ready for assembly or packaging.

Wafer Thinning

Wafer thinning capability is a key tool for reducing the overall profile of a device or to expose materials that are embedded in the wafer. Atomica provides the thickness control as well as both roughness and smoothness of the finished surfaces that our customers desire.

The ability to thin wafers is critical to applications that require meeting certain form factors for packaging at the back end of the line assembly, fitting specific thickness profiles. For building more complex layers, the ability to polish heterogeneous material sets simplifies wafer processing by planarizing the surface instead of accommodating topography.

Details: Wafer grinding abilities are to +/- 5 µm tool tolerance.

Chemical Mechanical Polishing

Chemical Mechanical Polishing complements wafer thinning capability, which involves planarization and polishing to return the substrate surface to continue down the front end processing.

  • Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) CMP is a process that combines chemical and mechanical forces to planarize the surface of a wafer, removing excess material and achieving a smooth, flat surface. This is done using an abrasive slurry and polishing pad.
  • Etch-Back Planarization Etch-back planarization involves selectively etching back materials (such as oxides or polymers) to achieve surface uniformity. This technique is commonly used to level surfaces by removing uneven layers.
  • Electrochemical Planarization Electrochemical planarization is a technique where a wafer’s surface is planarized using electrochemical reactions to selectively remove material. This is typically done with a combination of electric current and chemical etching solutions.
  • Wafer Grinding Wafer grinding is a back-thinning process where the backside of a wafer is ground to reduce its thickness, making it suitable for specific applications such as flexible electronics or devices requiring ultra-thin wafers.
  • Wafer Polishing Wafer polishing is the process of refining the surface of a wafer to achieve a smooth, defect-free surface with low roughness. This is typically done using a combination of mechanical polishing and chemical treatments.

Wafer Dicing

Atomica offers die singulation services on both 6” and 8” wafer format. By utilizing a mechanical saw technique, partial slicing to expose bond pads can be incorporated when necessary, a process often refer to as Pad Reveal. Exposure to the bond pads prior to singulation allows for wafer-level testing. Dies are then either shipped on UV curable tape or in individual packages.

  • Wafer Dicing Wafer dicing is the process of cutting a silicon wafer into individual semiconductor chips or dies. This is typically done using a diamond-tipped saw blade or laser dicing tools, allowing precise cutting along pre-defined scribe lines.
  • Wafer Dicing Pad Reveal Wafer dicing pad reveal refers to the process of exposing specific areas, such as bond pads, by removing surrounding materials or protective layers during or after the dicing process. This ensures the pads are accessible for bonding or wire connection.
  • Wafer Dicing Scrub Wafer dicing scrub is a post-dicing cleaning process used to remove particles, contaminants, or residual material left on the wafer after dicing. This process ensures that the dies are clean and ready for packaging.

For more details on our back end capabilities, please contact our technical team or download our fab technology guide.

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Other Capabilities

Photolithography

Learn about Atomica’s photolithography technologies and leading-edge greyscale (3D) lithography.

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Deposition

Discover Atomica’s deposition tools and its wide range of metals and dielectric deposition capabilities.

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Dry Etching

Atomica offers Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE), Reactive Ion Etching and various other dry etch capabilities

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Why Atomica?

Atomica focuses on the success of our customers’ products, with rapid prototyping and scalable production. We are a leader in microfabrication, including photonics, sensors, biotechnology, and MEMS. We provide customers device optimization, faster speed to market, and cost-efficient fabrication. Atomica operates a 30,000-square-foot class 100 cleanroom near Santa Barbara, California, supporting a wide range of capabilities and materials with ISO 9001 certification and ITAR registration. We leverage sophisticated process control analytics, artificial intelligence inspection, advanced metrology, and proprietary fab operations systems to maximize efficiency.

Next Steps

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