ABSTRACT
Once the silicon crystal is grown, the silicon ingot is sliced into thin wafers-most of them no greater than 1 mm thickness. Since silicon is a hard, brittle material, special materials are needed to shape it to the desired levels. Industrial-grade diamonds, SiC, and Al2O3 are often used for this purpose. The conversion of silicon ingots into nal polished wafers requires at least six machining operations, two chemical operations, and one or two polishing operations, depending on whether the wafers are to be polished only on one side or both sides. Figure 5.1 shows fully grown single-crystal silicon ingots [1] ready to be converted to standard wafers for very large scale integration (VLSI) and ultra large scale integration (ULSI) circuit processing.
