Dear John,
I suggest you hold the wafer during dicing in one of the many available
waxes that readily dissolve in solvents.  One item used is called apiezon W
wax.  A possible vendor for other waxes is Aremco located in Massachusetts.
The dicing technique I would suggest is ultrasonic cutting.  A possible
vendor would be Bullen Ultrasonics.  If you can't find a location or web
site I will get an address.  Another possible technique might be
sandblasting, but you would have to find an appropriate mask.  A vendor is
Crystal Mark, in California I think.  Laser could also be used , but this is
not a batch process.  You could try Questech in Richardson Texas.  Good
luck,  Bob



-----Original Message-----
From: John D. Evans 
To: MEMS@ISI.EDU 
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 1999 4:53 AM
Subject: Dicing into circular quartz dice


>
>MEMS Community,
>
>I am interested in dicing up a 500 um quartz wafer into circular dice,
>roughly 10 mm diameter. I have two questions:
>
>1) What technologies and companies are available to do the cutting
>(preferably in California)?
>
>2) How do you hold the wafer and dice during cutting? If you hold the wafer
>only, then the circular parts will fall into the cutting stream/beam and
>get damaged. Is there a way to hold the individual dice? Is there a
>substrate that doesn't get cut that you can "glue" to both the wafer and
dice?
>
>Any suggestions appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>
>John D. Evans
>Silicon Waterworks
>