Hi Andrew,

I don't have any experience in this personally but a collegue I worked with in
the past used a wafer saw to cut up their lithium niobate wafers (also used for
a SAW application). I know your question is regarding scribing but just in case
this is useful to you - the method used was to clean then apply a coating of
positive resist on both sides of the wafer prior to the sawing. This is because
once the chips of lithium niobate generated during the sawing come into contact
with the wafer they don't easily come off!! After this stage the resist can be
stripped to leave clean, chip free sections.

Hope this is of use,

Novak



Does anyone have any experience of scribing Lithium Niobate SAW wafers (128
Y-X). The wafers are 0.5 mm thick.  We would be grateful for any tips!
_____________________________________

Novak Farrington
Institute of Microwaves and Photonics
School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
UK

Mob. 0790 9948673
Fax. +44 (0)113 343 7265
email: [email protected]