Patent 7943489 was granted and assigned to Texas Instruments on May, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A system and method for the removal of superfluous material in a bonded wafer assembly. The method includes cutting a plurality of parallel cuts in a top wafer, the plurality of cuts defining a segment of the top wafer attached to another portion of the top wafer via a tab, inserting a wedge-shaped breaker bar into at least one cut of the plurality of cuts, applying force to the breaker bar to fracture the tab, and removing the segment of the top wafer from the bonded wafer assembly, wherein a bottom wafer remains unsingulated after the removing.