Wafer producing method

A wafer producing method for producing a hexagonal single crystal wafer from a hexagonal single crystal ingot having a first surface, a second surface opposite to the first surface, a c-axis extending from the first surface to the second surface, and a c-plane perpendicular to the c-axis, the wafer producing method comprising:

• a separation start point forming step of setting a focal point of a laser beam having a transmission wavelength to the ingot inside the ingot at a predetermined depth from the first surface, which depth corresponds to a thickness of the wafer to be produced, and next applying the laser beam to the first surface as relatively moving the focal point and the ingot to thereby form a modified layer parallel to the first surface and cracks extending from the modified layer along the c-plane, thus forming a separation start point;
• and
• a wafer separating step of separating a plate-shaped member having a thickness corresponding to the thickness of the wafer from the ingot at the separation start point after performing the separation start point forming step, thus producing the wafer from ingot;
• the separation start point forming step including
• a modified layer forming step of relatively moving the focal point of the laser beam in a first direction perpendicular to a second direction where the c-axis is inclined by an off angle with respect to a normal to the first surface and the off angle is formed between the first surface and the c-plane, thereby linearly forming the modified layer extending in the first direction, and
• an indexing step of relatively moving the focal point in the second direction to thereby index the focal point by a predetermined amount;
• wherein in the separation start point forming step, the laser beam is applied to the ingot plural times in a condition where the focal point of the laser beam is set at the modified layer previously formed, thereby separating the cracks from the modified layer.