A fixture and method for laser fabrication by in-situ cleaving of semiconductor bars

摘要

The invention is an apparatus and method for cleaving a semiconductor bar and coating the cleaved facets within a vacuum environment. The apparatus is a fixture (10) having at least one rotator (14,16) for cleaving one or more semiconductor samples (32) into semiconductor bars and positioning the semiconductor bars for immediate coating of their cleaved facets. The fixture (10) is operably positioned within a processing chamber and exposed to a conventional coating medium before, during or immediately after cleaving the semiconductor sample. The fixture (10) cleaves the semiconductor samples (32) in a manner that reduces semiconductor sample waste and also allows the processing environment requirements to be reduced compared to other cleaving and coating techniques. A single actuation feed-through mechanism (70) actuates the fixture from outside of the processing chamber.