Laser soft marking on silicon wafer

A laser soft marking technique is developed for laser markings on a silicon wafer. Due to negligible surface modification, the laser soft wafer markings are invisible by naked eyes under room condition and are undetectable using sophisticated instruments. However, these laser markings are found to be visible to naked eyes through a differential condensation of water droplets on the laser-marked and unmarked silicon surfaces. To understand this phenomenon, a model is established to study the condensation of water droplets on laser-marked and unmarked silicon surfaces. Experimental observations and simulation results indicate that the laser soft marking could have modified the silicon surface with a thin polycrystalline silicon layer which has a much lower conductivity than the crystalline silicon. In addition, this thin layer exhibits a thermal conductivity which is approximately two orders of magnitude lower than that of its equivalent bulk material. As a result, heat transfer on the laser-marked silicon surface is much lower than the crystalline silicon and thus makes these laser soft markings easily visible visually under condensation.