Advanced Laser Scribing for Emerging LED Materials

Abstract

Lasers are becoming increasingly important in today's LED revolution and are essential for increasing the efficiency and reducing manufacturing cost of LEDs. Diode pumped solid state lasers excel in scribing horizontal type LEDs on sapphire, silicon, silicon carbide, III-nitrides (gallium nitride and aluminum nitride), as well as III-V semiconductors (gallium arsenide, gallium phosphide). These lasers are also used for dicing vertical type LEDs, which are becoming increasingly more important, often using high thermal conductivity metallic substrates such as copper, CuW and molybdenum. In this paper we will discuss some of the recent laser scribing/dicing techniques and how adequate selection of laser parameters and beam delivery optics allows for a high quality high throughput singulation process for the various materials listed above.