Cutting GaAs Devices Without Blade Dressing

This extended abstract addresses a saw defects, the severe backside chipping, when cutting GaAs devices. The author reveals the mechanism of saw blade early failure mode and provides a solution: chemical refreshing saw blade instead of mechanical dressing. This solution improves sawing quality, fully automatic saw throughput, and reduces consumable cost of saw blades. In general, this concept is applicable to improving the cutting of other fragile semiconductor materials as well. THE PURPOSE OF THE WORK Backside chipping is one of major technical challenge when cutting GaAs devices [1]. The project was designed to address the constraints (severe backside chipping) still commonly experienced even in latest improvements