1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dividing method for a package substrate having a plurality of devices sealed with resin or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a semiconductor packaging technique such as chip size package (CSP) and quad flat non-leaded package (QFN), a package substrate having a plurality of devices (device chips) sealed with resin or the like is used. The package substrate is composed of a plurality of device portions each including a plurality of devices and a marginal portion surrounding each device portion. Each device portion is partitioned into a plurality of device package regions individually corresponding to the plural devices by a plurality of division lines formed on the front side of the package substrate. The package substrate is divided along these division lines to thereby obtain a plurality of device packages each corresponding to the plural devices (device chips).
In dividing the package substrate by cutting or the like, an adhesive tape is attached to the back side of the package substrate, so as to prevent scattering of the device packages formed by the division of the package substrate (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-208445, for example). However, in the case that the adhesive tape is simply attached to the package substrate, various mechanisms for holding the package substrate must be designed so as to be dedicated to the package substrate. To cope with this problem, an annular frame is generally fixed to the peripheral portion of the adhesive tape attached to the back side of the package substrate (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-232080, for example). By fixing the annular frame to the adhesive tape, different kinds of package substrates can be suitably divided without changing the configuration of a cutting apparatus.