Cleaved grooves, also referred to herein as "cleave streets", are formed exclusively in a wafer passivation layer overlaying a wafer to provide for correctly aligned and sharp cleaves prior to singulation of the wafer into separate die or chips. The deployment of cleave streets is applicable to both Group III V-base wafers, such as InP-based wafers with photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and silicon-based wafers with integrated circuits where such wafers utilize a passivating layer