Non-traditional machining techniques for silicon wafers

Abstract

Silicon (Si) micromachining techniques have recently witnessed significant advancement, attributable to the high surge in demand for microelectromechanical and microelectronic devices. Micromachining techniques are widely used to cut or pattern Si, in order to obtain high-quality surface finishes for the fabrication of devices. Micromachining techniques are used for the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) microstructures for microelectromechanical devices. In this work, the capabilities and competencies of non-traditional Si micromachining techniques, including ultrasonic, ion beam milling, laser machining, and electrical discharge machining, are discussed and compared accordingly. The working principles, advantages, limitations, and Si microstructures that have been fabricated before are discussed in detail. Additionally, this work covers the performance reported by multiple researchers on these micromachining methods, spanning the temporal range of 1990 to 2020. The key outcomes of this study are explored and summarized.

Recent Trends and Developments in the Electrical Discharge Machining Industry: A Review

“…EDM has become widely utilized for processing materials like titanium [4,36,117], steel [50,104,118], and various alloys [80,119,120]. Recently, EDM has also been increasingly applied to non-traditional materials, including composites [42,77,121], ceramics [29,30,107], and semiconductors [28,122]. Electrode materials must resist erosion, offer workability, and ensure stable machining.…”

“…This problem reduces the selection of the optimal input parameters for a specific material [92,103,105,166,168] and/or the processing method and/or the nature of the process [166,167]. For optimization, intelligent process models based on neural network technologies [169,170], fuzzy logic methods [168], experiment planning methods (Taguchi method) [166], analysis of variance (ANOVA) [167], surface response methodology [167], and complex computational-computer-based methods [122] are applied. It is noted that there are few studies devoted to comparative analysis of optimization efficiency [170] which leads to solutions close to optimal or suboptimal.…”

“…Modern analytical and semi-analytical methods not only describe the wear of the workpiece but also the wear of the tool for one or many craters [183,184]. The primary direction of analytical methods involves mathematically describing individual phenomena of the EDM process depending on the parameters of the technological process [48,119,122,183,184,186]. Regression analysis is most often used for this purpose [117,167,183].…”

“…The statistics on experimental data presented in Part 3 were carried out according to the following articles: [11,12,36,37,42,46,49,50,58,60,70,71,75,77,80,81,83,85,86,[90][91][92]98,[103][104][105]107,108,110,115,[117][118][119]121,122,[124][125][126][127][128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][1...…”

Designing Inorganic Semiconductors with Cold‐Rolling Processability

“…[ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ] Recently, several top‐down mechanical processing methods have been developed for both layered and bulk inorganic semiconductors, such as mechanical grinding [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ] and polishing. [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ] However, the intrinsic brittleness plays a pivotal role in controlling the quality of the samples and the resulting flakes are difficult to reproduce, highly fragile, and very small in size. To overcome these three roadblocks, there is a pressing need for the design of inorganic semiconductors that are amenable to plastic deformation.…”