Investigation of Integrated Reactive Multilayer Systems for Bonding in Microsystem Technology.

For the integration of a reactive multilayer system (iRMS) with a high exothermic reaction enthalpy as a heat source on silicon wafers for low-temperature bonding in the 3D integration and packaging of microsystems, two main conflicting issues should be overcome: heat accumulation arising from the layer interface pre-intermixing, which causes spontaneous self-ignition during the deposition of the system layers, and conductive heat loss through the substrate, which leads to reaction propagation quenching. In this work, using electron beam evaporation, we investigated the growth of a high exothermic metallic Pd/Al reactive multilayer system (RMS) on different Si-wafer substrates with different thermal conduction, specifically a bare Si-wafer, a RuOx or PdOx layer buffering Si-wafer, and a SiO2-coated Si-wafer. With the exception of the bare silicon wafer, the RMS grown on all other coated wafers underwent systematic spontaneous self-ignition surging during the deposition process once it reached a thickness of around 1 µm. This issue was surmounted by investigating a solution based on tuning the output energy by stacking alternating sections of metallic reactive multilayer Pd/Al and Ni/Al systems that have a high and medium enthalpy of exothermic reactions, respectively. This heterostructure with a bilayer thickness of 100 nm was successfully grown on a SiO2-coated Si-wafer to a total thickness of 3 µm without any spontaneous upsurge of self-ignition; it could be electrically ignited at room temperature, enabling a self-sustained propagating exothermic reaction along the reactive patterned track without undergoing quenching. The results of this study will promote the growth of reactive multilayer systems by electron beam evaporation processing and their potential integration as local heat sources on Si-wafer substrates for bonding applications in microelectronics and microsystems technology.

Development and Characterization of Non-Evaporable Getter Thin Films with Ru Seeding Layer for MEMS Applications.

Mastering non-evaporable getter (NEG) thin films by elucidating their activation mechanisms and predicting their sorption performances will contribute to facilitating their integration into micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). For this aim, thin film based getters structured in single and multi-metallic layered configurations deposited on silicon substrates such as Ti/Si, Ti/Ru/Si, and Zr/Ti/Ru/Si were investigated. Multilayered NEGs with an inserted Ru seed sub-layer exhibited a lower temperature in priming the activation process and a higher sorption performance compared to the unseeded single Ti/Si NEG. To reveal the gettering processes and mechanisms in the investigated getter structures, thermal activation effect on the getter surface chemical state change was analyzed with in-situ temperature XPS measurements, getter sorption behavior was measured by static pressure method, and getter dynamic sorption performance characteristics was measured by standard conductance (ASTM F798⁻97) method. The correlation between these measurements allowed elucidating residual gas trapping mechanism and prediction of sorption efficiency based on the getter surface poisoning. The gettering properties were found to be directly dependent on the different changes of the getter surface chemical state generated by the activation process. Thus, it was demonstrated that the improved sorption properties, obtained with Ru sub-layer based multi-layered NEGs, were related to a gettering process mechanism controlled simultaneously by gas adsorption and diffusion effects, contrarily to the single layer Ti/Si NEG structure in which the gettering behavior was controlled sequentially by surface gas adsorption until reaching saturation followed then by bulk diffusion controlled gas sorption process.