Patent 6908565 was granted and assigned to Intel on June, 2005 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Methods for thinning wafer-to-wafer vertical stacks in the fabrication of stacked microelectronic devices. The methods include etching away unsupported portions of a wafer to be thinned in the vertical stack. The removal of the unsupported portions substantially eliminates potential cracking and chipping of the wafer, which can occur during the thinning process when the unsupported portions exist.