UV laser-induced high resolution cleaving of Si wafers for micro–nano devices and polymeric waveguide characterization

Abstract

Keywords:Laser cleaving Micro-nano photonic chips Polymeric waveguides Silicon fractureIn this work we propose a method for cleaving silicon-based photonic chips by using a laser based micromachining system, consisting of a ND:YV0 4 laser emitting at 355 nm in nanosecond pulse regime and a micropositioning system. The laser makes grooved marks placed at the desired locations and directions where cleaves have to be initiated, and after several processing steps, a crack appears and propagate along the crystallographic planes of the silicon wafer. This allows cleavage of the chips automatically and with high positioning accuracy, and provides polished vertical facets with better quality than the obtained with other cleaving process, which eases the optical characterization of photonic devices.This method has been found to be particularly useful when cleaving small-sized chips, where manual cleaving is hard to perform; and also for polymeric waveguides, whose facets get damaged or even destroyed with polishing or manual cleaving processing. Influence of length of the grooved line and speed of processing is studied for a variety of silicon chips. An application for cleaving and characterizing sol-gel waveguides is presented. The total amount of light coupled is higher than when using any other procedure.

Fabrication of (111)-faced single-crystal diamond plates by laser nucleated cleaving

“…In contrast to traditional mechanical cleaving of diamond, LNC provides the opportunity for precise control of the cleave propagation by tuning the scan speed of the laser. Similar to what has been done with silicon stealth dicing [49], where the laser power and stage translation speed have been tuned to achieve Wallner-line-free cleaves [50], further analysis of the mechanisms involved in LNC should allow for drastic reduction of the Wallner lines that form during crack propagation [39]. Furthermore, by simultaneously scanning the laser position and focus, it may be possible to propagate cleaves along {100} or {110} planes in SCD.…”

A controllable and defectless cutting postprocess method via cleavage of an elastic cocrystal based on pyrene and tetrachloroterephthalonitrile

“…Semiconductor fabrication plants and scientists always use wafers to manufacture semiconductor devices. [1][2][3] However, postprocess methods for organic photoelectric materials are still rare. This defect limits the material for applications.…”

Development and fabrication of optical biosensors based on biophotonic sensing cells (BICELLs)

“…Casquel and Juan José García-Ballesteros and was applied mainly to the precise dicing of photonic devices (Casquel et al 2011). Amount of generated debris depends on the technique used, but generally these thermal processes generate a low amount of debris compared with the other ones.…”