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I (JM) would recommend thermal fracture if you are comfortable with a torch.
Procedure
Tips:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Requires some form of torch. Heat up and pry up. Be careful not to let molten glass land on the IC. The best way to avoid this is to lift straight up and let it cool a bit before moving off to the side.
This has been a problem area and so the best advice I have is simply don't try to remove the die unless there is a good reason. If someone knows of a good way to remove glass affixed dies I'd be interested. All of these assume the package has already been opened.
Procedure
Surface tension makes simply plucking the die up difficult and so a knife tends to work better. Unfortunately, metal tweezers / knives chip dies and plastic tweezers melt. PTFE does a little better but puts off toxic gas (HF) when heated so its not a good idea.
Procedure:
It should be possible to use HF to dissolve the ceramic. Maybe NaOH could work as well?
Chip before (both identical):
One of these was thrown into water and the other had water dripped on it. Comparison:
Dunked chip close-up:
Dripped on chip close-up:
The motion of throwing the chip into the water caused the glass to flow and stick to the die. When the top was sheared off some of the die snapped off as a result. Additionally, it isn't as regular from moving around and so didn't break nearly as cleanly.
Advantages
Disadvantages
The glass tends to be much weaker than the ceramic. Therefore, its possible to shear a chip open by moving the top and bottom half in different directions.
Procedure
Ideally this would probably be done using a custom fixture to hold the top and apply even and straight force
Tips
Advantages
Disadvantages
I see no reason why you couldn't grind one open (eg with a Dremel) but it would probably take a long time and would require extensive cleanup after.
Might provide some hints if we knew how these were produced