Competing behavior of interface delamination and wafer cracking during peeling film from ultra-thin wafer

Peeling the front-side film from the flexible and ultra-thin wafer is a critical procedure for the fabrication of ultra-thin chips. For a successful peeling process, the following conditions are required simultaneously: the interface between the film and the wafer is debonded, the interface between the wafer and the substrate remains undelaminated, and the wafer stays intact. However, there are relatively few studies focusing on the underlying mechanism in this peeling process. Here, a theoretical model is developed to investigate the competing behavior of interface delamination and wafer cracking for the bilayer film-substrate system. Based on the constant-stress (Dugdale) cohesive law and Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, both the competing interface delamination criterion and the wafer cracking criterion are determined. The corresponding competing maps of interface delamination and wafer cracking are obtained, in which the interface delamination path and the wafer safety status can be predicted. The effect of several dimensionless parameters on the competing behavior of interface delamination and wafer cracking is examined systematically, including the property of the geometry, the material, and the interface of the bilayer film-substrate system. The theoretical model is validated by both finite element analysis (FEA) and experimental results. This research aims to provide some guidance for optimizing the peeling parameters and contribute to a higher success rate of peeling process.