A new model of grit cutting depth in wafer rotational grinding considering the effect of the grinding wheel, workpiece characteristics, and grinding parameters

Wafer rotational grinding is widely employed for back-thinning and flattening of semiconducting wafers during the manufacturing process of integrated circuits. Grit cutting depth is a comprehensive indicator that characterizes overall grinding conditions, such as the wheel structure, geometry, abrasive grit size, and grinding parameters. Furthermore, grit cutting depth directly affects wafer surface/subsurface quality, grinding force, and wheel performance. The existing grit cutting depth models for wafer rotational grinding cannot provide reasonable results due to the complex grinding process under extremely small grit cutting depth. In this paper, a new grit cutting depth model for wafer rotational grinding is proposed which considers machining parameters, wheel grit shape, wheel surface topography, effective grit number, and elastic deformation of the wheel grit and the workpiece during the grinding process. In addition, based on grit cutting depth and ground surface roughness relationship, a series of grinding experiments under various grit cutting depths are conducted to produce silicon wafers with various surface roughness values and compare the predictive accuracy of the proposed model and the existing models. The results indicate that predictions obtained by the proposed model are in better agreement with the experimental results, while accuracy is improved by 40%–60% compared to the previous models.