Failure Analysis and Elimination of Galvanic Corrosion on Bondpads During Wafer Sawing

Abstract

Abstract In our previous paper [1], discolored bondpads due to galvanic corrosion were studied. The results showed that the galvanic corrosion occurred in 0.8 ìm wafer fabrication (fab) process with cold Al alloy (Al-Si, 0.8 wt%-Cu, 0.5 wt%) metallization. Galvanic corrosion is also known as a two-metal corrosion and it could be due to either wafer fab process or assembly process. Our initial suspicion was that it was due to a DI water problem during wafer sawing at assembly process. After that, we did further failure analysis and investigation work on galvanic corrosion of bondpads and further found that galvanic corrosion might be due to longer rinsing time of DI water during wafer sawing. The rinsing time of DI water is related to the cutting time of wafer sawing. Therefore, some experiments of wafer sawing process were done by using different sizes of wafer (1/8 of wafer, a quadrant of wafer and whole of wafer) and different sawing speed (feed-rate). The results showed that if the cutting time was longer than 25 minutes, galvanic corrosion occurred on bondpads. However, if the cutting time was shorter than 25 minutes, galvanic corrosion was eliminated. Based on the experimental results, it is concluded that in order to prevent galvanic corrosion of bondpads, it is necessary to select higher feed-rate during wafer sawing process at assembly houses. In this paper, we will report the details of failure analysis and simulation experimental results, including the solution to eliminate galvanic corrosion of bondpads during wafer sawing at assembly houses.