Study of silicon micromachining using diode-pumped solid state lasers

Abstract

Laser micromachining of semiconductor materials such as silicon and sapphire has attracted more and more attention in recent years. High precision laser cutting and drilling processes have been successfully used in semiconductor, photonics, optoelectronics, and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) industries for applications including wafer dicing, scribing, direct via forming, and three-dimensional structuring. In the current study, Q-switched diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers have been used to scribe grooves on silicon wafer substrates at different pulsewidths (10 and 32 ns), pulse repetition rates (30, 40, and 50 kHz), focal lengths (100 and 53 mm), and wavelengths (355 and 266 nm). Experimental results have been compared between different laser parameters including pulsewidth, power level, pulse repetition rate, and wavelength. It has been found that at the same average power and same repetition rate, the grooves scribed by the longer pulsewidth laser are deeper, while the shorter pulsewidth laser produces better quality cuts. However, the same short pulsewidth laser can produce deeper grooves by increasing its repetition rate and power. Moreover, given the same laser parameters, the shorter focal length objective produces deeper grooves than the longer focal length one but it does not reduce the feature size proportionally due to the complications induced by debris and recast materials. Finally, with the same optical set-up and laser output parameters, it appears that the 266 nm laser does not provide obvious advantage when compared to the 355 nm laser in these particular silicon scribing experiments. The implications of these results are also discussed.