Laser stealth dicing of β-Ga2O3: Theoretical and experimental studies

• A combination of MD simulations and experiments is employed to investigate the LSD process and its microscopic mechanisms for β-Ga 2 O 3 . • It is demonstrated that MD simulations can provide practical guidance for the LSD process of β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers. • LSD is successfully performed on β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers in the laboratory under the guidance of MD simulations, resulting in good fracture surface quality. • The surface roughness (Ra) after LSD along the (100) crystal plane reaches 0.033 µm within a 218 µm × 218 µm area. Gallium oxide (Ga 2 O 3 ) is an ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor with excellent potential for high-power and ultraviolet optoelectronic device applications. High-performance Ga 2 O 3 -based high-power devices rely heavily on precise processing, especially in wafer dicing. Laser stealth dicing (LSD) is an innovative laser technology that utilizes a focused laser to create subsurface modifications in the wafer without surface damage. LSD has broad application prospects in the field of semiconductor precision processing. In this work, the idea of achieving high-quality dicing of β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers via LSD was proposed. A combination of atomistic simulations and experiments was used to understand the underlying mechanism of LSD of β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers. On the one hand, the laser loading and fracture process of β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers were simulated using molecular dynamics (MD) methods as well as a machine learning potential. The effects of single-pulse energy on LSD were analyzed through the lattice residual pressure, the final total energy of the system, the internal atomic strain, and the maximum stress value during uniaxial tension. On the other hand, based on the MD simulations, LSD was successfully performed on β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers along three main crystal planes in the laboratory, resulting in good surface quality. This work not only provides profound optimization strategies for the LSD process of β-Ga 2 O 3 , establishing the foundation for high-quality dicing of β-Ga 2 O 3 wafers, but also verifies the accuracy of MD simulations in predicting trends related to the LSD, offering a potential approach for high-quality dicing of other materials in future research.