IOP PUBLISHING J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

42 (2009) 042004 (4pp)

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS D: APPLIED PHYSICS doi:10.1088/0022-3727/42/4/042004

FAST TRACK COMMUNICATION

Seeing the invisible laser markings

Y C Lam1 , H Y Zheng2 , R T Tjeung1 and X Chen1
1 School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore 2 Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), 71 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 638075, Singapore

Received 19 August 2008, in nal form 21 November 2008 Published 28 January 2009 Online at stacks.iop.org/JPhysD/42/042004 Abstract Laser markings are widely used for identication and traceability. With the miniaturization of semiconductor devices, material removal in conventional deep laser markings is undesirable as it could cause contamination. Shallow laser markings 16 m in depth could be produced by melting and reshaping the material, with virtually no material removal, no debris and vapour free. However, with material modication, the planarity of the wafer is no longer maintained. We demonstrate here the production of invisible laser markings with no material removal, no debris and vapour free and undetectable material modication. These invisible markings were undetectable using sophisticated instruments, but they could be made clearly visible to our unaided naked eyes through the difference in condensation between the laser-marked and unmarked areas.

1. Introduction
Laser markings are widely used for identication and traceability purposes in semiconductor industry. The main drawbacks of conventional laser markings are recast and submicrometre size powder associated with the markings. Recast is formed by debris of liqueed material which solidies and attaches onto the base material, while sub-micrometre powder is the result of vapour condensation. Initially the primary concerns for these markings are readability and durability; hence deep laser marks (520 m deep) were acceptable. As semiconductor devices become smaller and more complex, any material removal due to markings is undesirable, and it could cause contamination. The primary concern now is to produce markings with minimum material removal, debris and vapour, but retaining ease of readability. Current commercially available techniques [1, 2], such as SoftMark , and SuperSoftMark , produce shallow laser markings at a relatively low laser power density by melting and reshaping the material. It is claimed that there is virtually no material removal and debris and vapour free. With only melting and resolidication, marks 16 m in depth can be produced. However, there is signicant material modication, and the planarity of the wafer is no longer maintained due to melting and resolidication for forming the marks.
0022-3727/09/042004+04$30.00

Here we report a simple, efcient, reliable and costeffective technique for seeing the invisible laser markings produced with negligible disturbance to the materials. These markings are produced with no material removal and melting of the material, and thus absolutely debris and vapour free, and without any distortion to the planarity of the wafer. Indeed, it is even difcult to detect or quantify any material changes. Although the markings cannot be detected by a microscope under normal circumstances and by expensive and sophisticated measuring instrument, they could be made visible to our unaided naked eyes under normal lighting.

2. Experimental results and discussions

The markings were produced on a single crystal [1 0 0] P-type silicon wafer (thickness of 450 m 25 m) by a 355 nm solid-state YAG laser with a pulse duration of 50 ns and a repetition rate of 4 kHz. The marking speed and the laser power density were 200 mm s1 and 13 105 W cm2 , respectively. The laser beam was manipulated by a pair of galvanometers through a scanning optics with a focal length of 100 mm. The laser power density was controlled by the laser power, the repetition rate and the focal position. Several common but rather sophisticated and expensive measurement techniques failed to detect these laser markings.
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J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42 (2009) 042004

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Figure 1. Microscopy of the invisible markings of 40 m line width with 160 m spacing between two neighbouring lines. (a) Invisible without condensation (2.5magnication); which are clearly visible under condensation, (b) 2.5 magnication, aq with laser-marked and unmarked lines appearing as light and dark lines, respectively, and (c) 20 magnication, with laser-marked and unmarked lines covered by small and spherical-shaped water droplets and large and irregular-shaped water droplets, respectively. (This gure is in colour only in the electronic version)

These include microscopy (Leica microscope with 2.520 times magnication), the non-contact surface prole technique (Nikon Eclipse L150 PL Confocal Imaging Proler with vertical resolution up to 200 nm) and contact type surface prole techniques (TalyScan 150 Stylus Proler and Veeco Dimension 3000 Atomic Force Microscope with vertical resolution up to 60 nm and up to 0.1 nm, respectively). None of these techniques, which have various resolutions and ranges, could detect any signicant differences between the invisible markings, the unmarked areas and a plain wafer before any markings were performed. However, by simply placing the marked laser wafer in a cold box (4 C) for approximately 5 min and then taken out in a normal laboratory environment (room temperature of 21 C and relative humidity of 66%), the markings were clearly visible to our unaided naked eyes. For ease of capturing the image for presentation purposes, a sample with laser markings was observed with an ordinary microscope (Leica) under low magnication (2.5 times). Figure 1(a) shows that no marking was detected if there was no condensation on the sample, and gure 1(b) shows that because of the difference in condensation, the laser-marked (lighter) and unmarked (darker) areas could easily be differentiated for an approximate duration of 10 s before the condensate evaporated and the markings became invisible once again. An enlarged view of the laser-marked areas using a Leica microscope with a magnication of 20 times is shown in gure 1(c). The laser-marked areas consisted of a series of laser-marked horizontal lines of approximately 40 m width with 160 m spacing between two neighbouring lines. With 2

condensation, the laser-marked areas were covered with small size and spherical-shaped water droplets with the diameter ranging from 3 to 12 m. On the unmarked areas, the water droplets were irregular in shape and size and were on average larger and varied signicantly (between 12 and 35 m). The signicant differences in the size and shape of the condensed water droplets on the marked and unmarked lines created a large difference in the reected/diffused light intensity, which led to a sharp contrast between the laser-marked (lighter) and unmarked (darker) areas to the naked eyes. As the sub-threshold laser pulses do not remove materials, there was no difference in the height between the marked and unmarked areas. For the differences in condensation on the marked and unmarked areas to occur, there must be a difference in the thermal properties between the marked and unmarked areas. Two possibilities exist, namely, oxidation and/or phase transformation of the laser-marked area. What was surprising is that examination of the laser-marked silicon wafer by (a) energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) for elemental analysis could not detect any difference in the elemental composition between the marked and unmarked areas and the plain wafer without any laser marking, indicating that there was no oxidation due to laser marking, and (b) Philips x-ray diffraction (XRD) could not detect any phase changes, in particular, from single crystal to polycrystalline or amorphous silicon. However, the clearly observed differences in the condensation behaviour between the marked and unmarked areas indicate that there must be a difference between these two areas, although the change induced by the laser marking was too small to be detected. As such, we produced visible markings using higher laser power density (which was still rather low) and examined the samples using EDX and XRD. For these higher power density samples, no differences were observed for elemental analysis by EDX between the lasermarked and unmarked areas and the plain wafer, indicating that there was no oxidation. For single crystal silicon, XRD should only have a single peak [3], which was observed for both plain wafers without markings and invisible markings, see gures 2(a) and (b), respectively. However, the multiple peaks shown in gure 2(d) for visible markings produced at a higher laser power density of 56 105 W cm2 indicate a change from single crystal silicon to polycrystalline silicon. With the laser power density lowered slightly to 43 105 W cm2 , the number of peaks detected by XRD signicantly reduces, see gure 2(c). This indicates that there was reorganization of the single crystal silicon. Further deduction may be made based on the penetration depth of the laser beam. From [4, 5], the optical penetration depth in silicon for our laser beam (355 nm) is 5 nm. As the intensity of the laser beam decreases exponentially with distance, one could argue that the transformed thickness layer, if any, will be in the order of the penetration depth. As described by the BeerLambert law, the power density I at depth z for a laser beam of incident power density Io is given by I = I0 e z = I0 ez/(2d) , (1)

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42 (2009) 042004

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Figure 2. XRD results for a silicon wafer with and without laser markings. (a) Plain single crystal silicon wafer with no marking, (b) invisible markings with a power density of 13 105 W cm2 , (c) visible markings with a power density of 43 105 W cm2 , (d) visible markings with a power density of 56 105 W cm2 . In gure (c) the two peaks neighbouring (400) are not labelled as they do not correspond to any reference spectra.

where is the optical absorption coefcient and the optical penetration depth d is dened to be 1/(2). For the invisible laser marking power density of 13 105 W cm2 , the power density at the penetration depth d can be calculated to be approximately 7.9 105 W cm2 . At the higher laser power density of 56 105 W cm2 where a polycrystalline structure can be observed by XRD, the depth at which the same laser power density of 7.9105 W cm2 occurs could be calculated to be 3.8 d. Similarly, for the laser power density of 43 105 W cm2 at which only some re-alignments of the crystal structure can be observed, the depth at which the laser power density of 7.9 105 W cm2 occurs could be calculated to be 3.4 d. These calculations indicate that for the range of the laser power density investigated there is no drastic change in the depth as the incident laser power density increases. As such, it seems reasonable to assume that there was a thin layer of polycrystalline silicon, but it could not be detected by our XRD conclusively with a reduction in the laser power density from 56 105 to 43 105 W cm2 . Thus, the sensitivity of the XRD could also be deduced to be in the same order of the penetration depth, with the threshold of detection dened by an incident laser power density of 43105 W cm2 . Similarly, at a laser power density of 7.9 105 W cm2 , it is likely that there was a thin layer of the polycrystalline structure which could not be detected by our XRD. In addition, we could deduce that the transformed polycrystalline structure was in the order of the penetration depth of 5 nm. 3

Figure 3. Number of peaks as a function of the power density.

We could also examine the number of peaks of the XRD measurements. Figure 3 shows that the number of peaks and thus polycrystallinity increased as the power increased. Although we could not detect multiple peaks for the invisible markings, from the trend shown in gure 3, it is most likely that there was some transformation of single crystal silicon to polycrystalline silicon. Thus, we infer that at the invisible laser marking power intensity of 13105 W cm2 , there was no oxidation, but a thin layer of silicon at the laser-marked areas was modied from single crystal to polycrystalline silicon, although the change was too small to be detected.

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 42 (2009) 042004

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The single crystalline silicon has a thermal conductivity of 156 W m1 K1 [6], which is about two orders of magnitude higher than that of polycrystalline silicon (2.5 W m1 K1 ) [7]. Thus, this undetectable thin layer of low conductivity polycrystalline silicon acted as an insulation layer. This low conductive surface would result in a low surface heat transfer coefcient, thus a low heat transfer rate [8, 9]. This will result in a smaller heat conduction rate from the surface to the inner volume of the wafer, which was much colder than the surroundings. Hence, as the water droplets condensed on the polycrystalline silicon (laser-marked areas), the latent heat of condensation and heat transfer from the ambient environment will heat up the surface (consisting of polycrystalline silicon) of the markings faster as compared with the unmarked surface of a single crystal silicon. Once the temperature of the surface had increased to or above the dew point temperature, there would be no more condensation, and the condensate would begin to evaporate due to heating by the hotter environment. This relatively faster increase in temperature would result in smaller droplet condensation and faster evaporation of the condensed droplets in the marked areas. This is consistent with our experimental observations.

at the laser-marked area, with the thermal conductivity of the polycrystalline silicon being two orders of magnitude lower than that of the single crystalline silicon.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), Nanyang Technological University, and the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech). The assistance of Mr Chu Pau Loong in carrying out the laser marking and that of Mr Tan Lai Lee and Wong Pu Jun Jeffrey of MAE is much appreciated.

References
[1] Scaroni J and McKee T 1997 Solid State Technol http://www. solid-state.com/display article/3224/5/none/none/Feat/ A-close-look-at-laser-marking-of-silicon-wafers [2] Gu B and Ehrmann J S 2006 WO/2006/053288 http://www. wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=US2005041144& DISPLAY=CLAIMS [3] Cullity B D and Stock S R 2001 Elements of X-ray Diffraction 3rd edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall) [4] Holtz M, Duncan W M, Zollner R and Liu R 2000 J. Appl. Phys. 88 2523 [5] Aspnes D E and Studna A A 1983 Phys. Rev. B 27 985 [6] Ohsaki H 1997 Properties of amorphous silicon and its alloys Thermal Conductivity, ed S Tim (London: INSPEC) chapter 8 [7] Nolas G S, Beekman M, Gryko J, Lamberton G A, Tritt T M and McMillian P F 2003 Appl. Phys. Lett. 82 910 [8] Grifth P and Lee M S 1967 Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 10 697 [9] Tsuruta T 1993 Proc. Engineering Foundation Conf. on Condensation and Condenser Design (St Augustine, FL, USA, 712 March 1993) (New York: ASME) p159

3. Conclusion
In conclusion, we have demonstrated that the normally invisible laser marking produced without melting or oxidation of the silicon substrate could be easily detected through condensation. This is due to the difference in the condensation behaviour between the marked and unmarked areas. This difference in condensation is most probably caused by the transformation of single crystal to polycrystalline silicon