Semiconductor substrate provided with marks for alignment even under a resist film

Claim 1

A semiconductor substrate, comprising: chips having sides selectively disposed on said surface of said substrate so as to prevent a flow, along dicing lines formed on the substrate, of a resist material to be coated on the substrate; and geometrically similar straight alignment marks provided on a surface of the substrate, for recognizing and deciding a position of registration of a wafer formed thereon and a mask used therewith in a photolithographic step included in the process of manufacturing a semiconductor device on the substrate, groups of said alignment marks being formed and distributed only along straight lines with the alignment marks in each group being evenly spaced apart, lengthwise mutually parallel, and aligned normal to a corresponding axis of a set of X-Y Cartesian coordinate axes, for determination of said positions of registration with respect to said corresponding axes being decided by said alignment marks, said alignment marks each extending so as to avoid said sides, wherein said chips are defined along dicing lines formed for dividing/separating the semiconductor substrate and are in the form of steps formed by selectively depositing a film on the semiconductor substrate, the dicing lines are provided along the respective directions of the coordinate axes, said alignment marks comprise a group of X alignment marks distributed only along the X-axis and each normal thereto for deciding X-coordinates of said positions of registration and a group of Y alignment marks distributed only along the Y-axis and each normal thereto for deciding Y-coordinates of said positions of registration, and said X alignment marks are arranged only between X dicing lines provided along the direction of the X-coordinate axis and said Y alignment marks are arranged only between Y dicing lines provided along the direction of the Y-coordinate axis.