Substrate edge scribe

Abstract

A substrate that is adapted for the fabrication of integrated circuits, having an improved scribe mark. The scribe mark is small enough to fit within an edge exclusion zone of the substrate, is disposed wholly within the edge exclusion zone of the substrate, is not disposed on a backside of the substrate, and is readable by optical character recognition equipment. By placing the scribe mark within the edge exclusion zone of the substrate, in this manner, none of the space for salable dice is taken by the scribe mark. Further, the small size of the scribe mark reduces effects from chemical streaming, chemical mechanical polishing, and particulate expulsion. In addition, standard optical character recognition equipment can be used to read the scribe mark, without rendering the equipment unable to read prior art scribe marks.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.