Laser is one of the "Four Great Inventions" in the 20th century. It is another major discovery after atomic energy, computers and semiconductors. In 2019, the global laser market reached 15.13 billion dollars. From the perspective of the wavelength distribution of the spectrum, with the wavelength of the laser becoming longer, the technical difficulty is greatly increased, but there is a significant application demand and huge market space in the civilian and military fields.
Chip processing equipment is closely related to the prosperity of chips. With the expansion of the domestic semiconductor market, the demand for chips is growing rapidly. With the transfer of global integrated circuits to Chinese Mainland, the expansion of the domestic market and the improvement of production capacity, as well as the pressure from home and abroad, the proportion of Chinese Mainland's semiconductor equipment market to the global semiconductor equipment market has increased year by year in recent years. In 2020, the scale of Chinese Mainland's semiconductor equipment market accounted for 26.33% of the global semiconductor equipment market, an increase of 14.6% compared with 11.73% in 2014.
What important role does laser cutting machine play in chip manufacturing?
As one of the "Four Great Inventions" in the 20th century, laser plays an important role in chip processing. In chip manufacturing, the wafer is the core raw material of the chip. The laser cutting machine can well meet the requirements of wafer cutting and effectively avoid the problems of grinding wheel scribing
1. Non contact processing: In laser processing, only the laser beam contacts the workpiece, and no cutting force acts on the cutting workpiece, so as to avoid damage to the surface of processed materials.
2. High processing accuracy and small thermal impact: pulse laser can achieve extremely high instantaneous power, extremely high energy density and very low average power. It can complete processing instantaneously with very small thermal impact area to ensure high-precision processing and small thermal impact area.
3. High processing efficiency and good economic benefits: the laser processing efficiency is often several times the mechanical processing effect, and there is no consumables and no pollution. Laser invisible cutting technology of semiconductor wafer is a new laser cutting process, which has many advantages such as fast cutting speed, no dust generated during cutting, no substrate consumption, small cutting path required, and complete dry process.
The main principle of laser cutting is to focus the short pulse laser beam through the material surface to the middle of the material, form a calcium layer in the middle of the material, and then apply external pressure to separate the chips.
Laser cutting equipment is widely used in the semiconductor industry. Domestic laser equipment has developed rapidly in recent years. The application of domestic chips has shown a diversified development in recent years. The demand for chips in smart phones, the Internet of Things, automotive electronics, 5G, artificial intelligence and other industries has shown an upward trend. This will have higher requirements for the quality and reliability of chips. In the future, the domestic semiconductor market will bring huge development opportunities to domestic equipment.