Transfer and handling of thin semiconductor materials by a combination of wafer bonding and controlled crack propagation

Direct waferbonding is an appropriate technology to join two or more wafers of the same or of different materials. Waferbonding can be used to stiffen thin wafers during fabrication. However, conventional fabrication processes lead to an increase of the bond strength, which inhibits the required de-bonding. The propagation of cracks, which is based on a subcritical crack growth in the bonded interface, was used to cleave the bonded wafers. The subcritical crack growth is limited to the bonded interface, since the adjacent bulk semiconductor materials are inherently resistant to subcritical crack growth. The process allows the separation of Si-Si and Si-GaAs wafers after annealing. Wafer-bonded SOI wafers can also be separated with this technology even if they were annealed at 1100°C. The first examples for wafer stiffening during fabrication and wafer transfer using the developed approach will be presented.