Material related fundamentals of cutting techniques for GaAs wafer manufacturing

Driven by the requirement of high cutting efficiency and improvement of wafer flatness wire sawing of GaAs single crystals under brittle material removal conditions has been studied. Crack nucleation and crack propagation were investigated by indentation and scratching tests on polished {100}-oriented semi-insulating GaAs wafers. Based on these results a concept has been developed to control the force balance in the cutting slits so that the deflection of the wires perpendicular to the cutting planes is minimal resulting in cuts of high flatness. The concept has been successfully introduced in mass production of GaAs wafers.