Manufacturing process of element chip using laser grooving and plasma-etching

A manufacturing process of an element chip, comprising:

• a preparing step for preparing a substrate having first and second sides opposed to each other, the substrate containing a semiconductor layer, a wiring layer and a resin layer formed on the first side, and the substrate including a plurality of dicing regions and element regions defined by the dicing regions;
• a laser grooving step for irradiating a laser beam onto the dicing regions to form grooves so as to expose the semiconductor layer along the dicing regions;
• and
• a dicing step for plasma-etching the semiconductor layer along the dicing regions through the second side to divide the substrate into a plurality of the element chips,
• the laser grooving step comprising first and second steps,
• wherein the first step includes irradiating an ablation laser beam to ablate the resin layer and the wiring layer so as to expose the semiconductor layer along the dicing regions, and
• wherein the second step includes irradiating a melting laser beam to melt a surface of the semiconductor layer exposed along the dicing regions after the first step,
• wherein a beam intensity Ia of the ablation laser beam and a beam intensity Im of the melting laser beam satisfy Ia >Im.