ESD concerns in sawing wafers with discrete semiconductor devices

Wafers with discrete semiconductor devices are sawn without CO₂ bubbling. On one hand, there are claims that wafer sawing process using Dl-water without CO₂ bubbling is not the state of the art process. On the other hand, there is a major blocking point for the introduction of CO₂ bubbling in discrete devices wafer sawing process. Because discrete device wafers have as many as 300K chips on a single 6-inch wafer. Therefore the sawing process requires as long as 2.5 hours to process a wafer. The use of DI water in the sawing process results in severe corrosion issues. Investigations are conducted and the results are presented.semiconductor wafer sawing process