Laser have been used for cutting various types of materials for several decades. The majority of these applications using a single beam to deliver the power to the material which needs to be diced. Issue with single beam dicing is a high Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) since all the power needs to be delivered into one single small area. Specifically for high quality micro machining applications such as semiconductor material dicing a large HAZ is not allowed. This is the driver for ASMPT to develop a multi beam process. Using the multi beam concept you deliver the same or even higher total laser power to the material but since it is divided into a large number of beams the power per beam is low and therefore the HAZ generated within the material remains low as well, while the material removal rate is increased. When using multi beam laser processing the productivity is not limited by the maximum amount of power the material can handle before it starts to deteriorate (increase of HAZ) but it is limited by the available laser power since the power can be split into a large number of beams.
Productivity:
Single beam > Process limited
Multi beam > Laser power limited