JP2894904B2 - Daisa - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a dicer (dicing apparatus) used for processing a thin groove with a grindstone blade to divide a semiconductor wafer into chips, and more particularly to a workpiece (semiconductor wafer) to be processed. The present invention relates to a dicer in which a supply / discharge mechanism referred to as a loader for supplying / discharges a workpiece and a rotation mechanism referred to as a spinner for cleaning work chips after processing are integrally formed or combined.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art The most common use of dicer is
This is the time when a thin groove is machined between each chip in order to divide the semiconductor wafer into chips. FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a basic configuration of a conventional dicer. In FIG. 5, reference numeral 500 denotes a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer). Reference numeral 511 denotes a processing stage for vacuum-holding and fixing the wafer 500 at the time of processing.
Move by 12. 513 is a grindstone blade.
Is a spindle for rotating the grindstone blade 513. Reference numeral 515 denotes a support column for the grindstone blade. The above parts are provided on the table 510 and form a cutting part.

Reference numeral 520 denotes a loader base, on which a wafer transfer arm 521 and a wafer unloading mechanism 524 are mounted.
Having. In the figure, only the transport belt of the wafer removal mechanism 524 is shown. Reference numeral 523 denotes a wafer storage box in which the wafers 500 are stored, and the supply and collection of the wafers during processing are performed by removing and attaching the wafer storage box. Reference numeral 530 denotes a table of a spinner unit, and reference numeral 530 denotes a wafer 5 after processing is completed.
This is a turntable that vacuum-adsorbs and rotates the wafer 500 in order to clean the processing dust of 00.

[0004] state at a processing step in dicer, to prevent the wafer is apart disconnected by thin grooves, which stuck to the adhesive tape was fixed to the frame having a hole in the center called frame However, only the wafer is shown because it is not directly related to the invention. This is the same in other figures. Next, an outline of the processing procedure will be described.

[0005] First, a plurality of unprocessed wafers 500 are stored in a wafer storage box 523 and set on a table 520 of a loader unit. The wafer unloading mechanism 524 is connected to the wafer storage box 523.
Is placed on a belt and transported to a predetermined position. Next, the wafer transfer arm 521 rotates and moves up and down to hold the wafer 500, and is placed on the processing stage 511 that has moved to a predetermined position. The processing stage 511 to which the mounted wafer 500 is vacuum-adsorbed moves to the processing position, and the thin groove is processed. In the case of a semiconductor wafer, several tens of grooves are machined in each of two directions. When the thin groove processing is completed, the processing stage 511 returns to the wafer transfer arm 52 again.
The wafer transfer arm 521 moves to the transfer position
Receives the processed wafer 500, and the turntable 5 of the spinner.
31. The cleaned wafer 500 is returned to the wafer removal mechanism, and is again stored in the wafer storage box 523. After the above operation is performed for all the stored wafers, the wafer storage box 523 is recovered, and the unprocessed wafer is supplied again.

[0006]

In the conventional dicer, the supply and discharge of wafers are performed manually, and the supply and discharge of wafers to and from the spinner are sometimes performed manually. The operation is automated, and the loader unit and the spinner unit are provided integrally or used after being combined together. For this reason, there is a problem that the dicer as a whole is large and requires a large site area. In particular, when a plurality of dicers are installed and operated in parallel, it is required to reduce the entire installation area as much as possible.

According to the present invention, in a dicer having a cutting section, a loader section and a spinner section, the operation time of the cutting section is much longer than the operation time of the loader section and the spinner section, and the loader section and the spinner section are on standby. Focusing on the fact that time is long, an object of the present invention is to realize a dicer that can reduce the installation area as a whole system and can operate each part more efficiently.

[0008]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a basic configuration of a dicer of the present invention. A line partially having an arrow indicates a movement path of the workpiece. The dicer of the present invention
A cutting portion for turning a grindstone blade to form a thin groove in the workpiece 100;
And a loader unit 2 for supplying after the completion of the processing,
A spinner unit 3 is provided for rotating the workpiece 100 after processing in the cutting unit to clean the processing debris. In order to achieve the above object, a plurality of cutting units 1-1, 1 are provided.
-2, the number of the loader unit 2 and the number of the spinner units 3 are smaller than the number of the cutting units, and the loader unit 2 and the spinner unit 3 are common to the plurality of cutting units 1-1 and 1-2. It is characterized by comprising.

[0009]

[Function] In the cutting part, many grooves are machined.
It takes a long time to process one workpiece (wafer). On the other hand, the loader unit 2 performs an operation of supplying an unprocessed wafer before processing, and performs a recovery operation of the wafer after processing, but is almost in a standby state during the groove processing in the cutting unit. Similarly, the spinner 3 only rotates and cleans the wafer after processing is completed, and is a short-time operation. Therefore, during the groove processing in the cutting section, the apparatus is almost in a standby state. Therefore, even if the loader unit 2 and the spinner unit 3 are shared by the plurality of cutting units 1-1 and 1-2,
The same processing efficiency as when a plurality of sets of the cutting section, the loader section 2 and the spinner section 3 are provided is obtained, and the cost and the installation area are reduced by sharing the loader section 2 and the spinner section 3. Is possible.

In order to improve the processing efficiency, two spindles are provided in the cutting section, and one wafer is processed in parallel by two grinding stone blades. At present, sufficient effects cannot be obtained due to the difficulty of fine adjustment of the processing positions of the two grindstone blades and the time difference caused by the difference between the processing positions. In comparison, the dicer of the present invention
Since the cutting portions are completely independent, the above-described problem does not occur, and high-efficiency machining is possible.

In the processing of a wafer, thin grooves are formed on a single wafer in two stages by using grindstone blades having different blade thicknesses as described later. When such processing is performed in the conventional example having the above-mentioned two spindles, a two-stage thin groove processing without moving to another dicer and processing by mounting different grindstone blades on the two spindles. Is possible. However, since the blade thickness is different, the processing speed in each stage is different, and there is a problem that the processing speed of the slower processing is limited, the processing efficiency is reduced, and processing cannot be performed under optimum processing conditions.

On the other hand, in the dicer of the present invention, the cutting portion is independent. For example, if the speed ratio between the faster machining and the slow machining is 2: 1, the cutting portion is not used for the slow machining. If one cutting part is provided, one cutting part is provided for faster processing, and the loader part and the spinner part are made common, there is no need to move to another dicer during processing, and the processing of the cutting part High-efficiency processing that maximizes the capacity and processing under optimal processing conditions become possible.

[0013]

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of a first embodiment of the present invention. Reference numerals 21-1 and 21-2 denote first and second cutting portions, respectively, reference numeral 22 denotes a loader portion, and reference numeral 23 denotes a spinner portion, each of which has the same configuration as the conventional one as shown in FIG. The detailed description is omitted here.

Reference numeral 221 denotes a transfer arm provided on the loader unit 22, which rotates about a point 0, and which is denoted by B, C, and C in FIG.
The wafer 200 is transferred between the positions D and E. A indicates a wafer position in the wafer storage box, and the wafer 200 is moved between the positions A and B by a belt transport mechanism (not shown). F and G represent processing positions of the first and second cutting units, respectively, and are moved between the wafer transfer positions C and D by a moving mechanism (not shown) of the processing stage.

After the wafer 200 stored in the wafer storage box is moved to the position B by the belt transfer mechanism, it is transferred by the transfer arm 221 to the position C or the position D.
First cutting unit 21-1 or second cutting unit 2
1-2, when the processing table is moved to the C position or the D position, the received wafer 200 is vacuum-sucked, alignment is performed for alignment, and the processing position F or G is performed.
Move to and perform machining. For example, first, after the wafer is transferred to the first cutting unit 21-1 at the position C, the transfer arm B immediately returns to the position B, and holds the next wafer moved from the wafer storage box to the position B to position D. To the second cutting unit 21-2.

The wafer, which has been processed in each cutting section, is moved to the position C or D again.
A spinner 23 holds this and moves it to the E position.
And the spinner 23 cleans the wafer. Since the time required for cleaning is short, the transfer arm 221 may be on standby during that time. However, in order to further improve the processing efficiency, the transfer arm 221 returns to the position B and waits for an unprocessed wafer. For example, it is moved to the position C and passed to the first cutting unit 21-1, and the first cutting unit immediately starts the next processing. The wafer that has been cleaned by the spinner 23 is returned to the position B by the transfer arm 221 and stored in the wafer storage box. Of course, when the processing in both cutting parts is completed equally, one of the cutting parts needs to wait for the cleaning of the wafer processed in the other cutting part to be completed and stored in the wafer storage box, The waiting time is short and there is no problem.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the configuration of the second embodiment.
One set of the loader unit 32 and the spinner unit 33 is provided for the three cutting units 31-1, 31-2, 31-3. The loader section 32 has two transfer arms 321 and 3
The first transfer arm 321 includes a loader section 32, a spinner section 33, and a first cutting section 31-.
The transfer between the first and second cutting units 31-2 is performed, and the second transfer arm 322 performs the transfer between the loader unit 32, the spinner unit 33, and the third cutting unit 31-3. 323 is a wafer storage box.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory view of a two-stage cutting process performed in the second embodiment. In the figure, 440 is a wafer, and 441 is an adhesive tape. As shown in FIG. 4B, in the first cutting step, a wide groove 450 is machined at a low speed using a wide whetstone blade (blade) for the purpose of cutting including a teg pattern or the like formed on the surface. Is done.
In the second cutting step, a narrow groove 451 is formed at a high speed in a portion of only silicon using a narrow blade.

In this embodiment, the first cutting unit 31-
The first and second cutting sections 31-2 perform the first cutting step, and the third cutting section 31-3 performs the second cutting step on the wafer after the first cutting step. The wafer taken out of the wafer storage box 323 is transferred to the first cutting unit 31-1 or the second cutting unit 31-2 by the first transfer arm 321 and is transferred to the spinner unit 33 by the first transfer arm after processing. After cleaning, the second transfer arm 322 transfers the narrow groove to the third cutting portion 31-3.
After the processing, the wafer is cleaned again by the spinner 33 and returned to the wafer storage box 323.

The first, second, and third cutting units are controlled so that their respective waiting times are minimized. However, the first cutting unit 31-1 or the third cutting unit 31-3 is operated while the third cutting unit 31-3 is processing. 2 cutting unit 31-2
When the processing is completed in step 3, it is necessary to wait until the processing in the third cutting unit 31-3 is completed. In order to make such a standby time as short as possible, a standby portion such as 34 in the drawing is provided, and after the cleaning of the wide groove in the first or second cutting portion with the spinner 33 is completed, the standby portion is temporarily stopped. It is designed to be placed on the standby portion 34 in a targeted manner. As a result, the first or second cutting section that has finished processing can immediately start the next processing.

FIG. 4 conventionally performed using different blades
In general, such a two-stage cutting is performed by changing a dicer, and therefore, it is necessary to move a wafer placed in a wafer accommodating box between dicers. As shown in FIG.
Grooves have already been formed in the wafer after the cutting step, and there has been a problem that the wafer is liable to be broken by an impact or the like while being transferred to another dicer. However, the dicer according to the second embodiment has the advantage that the two-stage cutting can be performed without moving between dicers, so that the occurrence of cracks on the way can be reduced.

[0022]

According to the present invention, not only can the structure of the entire dicer be simplified and the cost can be reduced without lowering the processing efficiency, but also the installation area can be reduced and the size can be reduced.
Furthermore, even when a plurality of stages of processing are performed using different blades, it is not necessary to carry the material between dicers, so that the occurrence of undesired cracks can be reduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a basic configuration of a dicer of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a configuration of a first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration of a second embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the progress of two-stage cutting in a second embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a configuration of a conventional dicer.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1-1: first cutting portion 1-2: second cutting portion 2: loader portion 3: spinner portion 31-3: third cutting portion 100: plate-shaped workpiece

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A dicer for forming a thin groove on a plate-like workpiece (100), comprising: a cutting section for rotating a grindstone blade to form a thin groove on the workpiece (100); A loader section (2) for supplying the workpiece (100) to the section and recovering the workpiece after completion of the processing;
A dicer including a spinner part (3) for rotating the workpiece (0) to clean the processing waste, comprising a plurality of the cutting parts (1-1, 1-2), the loader part (2) and the spinner part ( Each number of 3) is smaller than the number of the cutting sections, and the loader section (2) and the spinner section (3) are shared by a plurality of cutting sections (1-1, 1-2). A dicer.