Various exemplary details are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, which however, should not be taken to limit the invention to the specific embodiments shown but are for explanation and understanding only.
a-2d are diagrams illustrating the sequence of movements required to close the switch illustrated in
Although the devices and methods described herein are described with respect to particular types of MEMS thermal switches, it should be understood that these embodiments are exemplary only, and that the systems and methods described here may be applied to any of a number of MEMS and non-MEMS devices, for which lower predictable electrode contact resistance is an important design parameter.
The thermal switch 10 may include two cantilevers, 100 and 200. Each cantilever 100 and 200 contains a passive beam 110 and 210, respectively. A conductive circuit 120 and 220 may be coupled to each passive beam 110 and 210, respectively, by a plurality of dielectric tethers 150 and 250. When a voltage is applied between terminals 130 and 140, a current is driven through conductive circuit 120. The Joule heating generated by the current causes the circuit 120 to expand relative to the unheated passive beam 110. Since the circuit is coupled to the passive beam 110 by the dielectric tether 150, the expanding conductive circuit drives the passive beam in the upward direction 165.
Applying a voltage between terminals 230 and 240 causes heat to be generated in circuit 220, which drives passive beam 210 in the direction 265 shown in
To begin the closing sequence, in
MEMS switches such as that shown in
The variability in contact resistance may be manifested by sudden and unrepeatable changes in the contact resistance between contact electrode 170 and contact electrode 270.
As shown in
It should be understood that not all of the steeps illustrated in
The process begins in step S100 and proceeds to step S200, wherein a sacrificial layer is formed over the surface of a substrate. In one exemplary embodiment, the sacrificial layer is copper, which may be electroplated on the surface of the substrate and may be subsequently conveniently removed with an isotropic etch using an ammonia-based Cu etchant. In step S300, gold electrodes are formed over the sacrificial layer. This gold may form the tip members 160 and 260 and contact electrodes 170 and 270. Gold may be chosen for this component because it may have lower contact resistance than the material chosen for the cantilevered beams 110 and 210, which must have good mechanical properties for bending in response to the expansion of conductive circuits 120 and 220.
In step S400, nickel or nickel alloy cantilevered beams are deposited over the gold electrodes and the sacrificial layer. This plating may be preceded by the deposition of a plating seed layer, for example, chromium (Cr) and gold (Au), deposited by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or sputter deposition to a thickness of 100-200 nm. Photoresist may then be deposited over the seed layer and patterned with the outline of the desired cantilevered beams. The photoresist then serves as a stencil for the plating of the nickel or nickel alloy. Nickel or a nickel alloy is chosen for the cantilevered beam because of its suitable stiffness and resistance to plastic deformation. The nickel or nickel alloy may be plated through the photoresist stencil. In addition, deposition processes other than plating may be used to form the cantilevered beams.
In step S500, the cantilevered beams and gold electrodes are released from the substrate by, for example, etching away the sacrificial layer. In step S600, the gold electrodes are etched in a gold etching solution. In step S700, the etching solution is rinsed from the device, which stops the etching of the gold electrode. In step S800, the device is dried and the substrate is bonded to a lid in step S900 to protect the switch from handling damage, for example. Further details for the bonding of a device wafer to a lid wafer may be found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/211,622 (Attorney Docket No. IMT—Preform), which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. The substrate may be singulated in step S1000. The process ends in step S1100.
To perform step S600, etching the electrode material, a liquid etchant may be chosen which preferentially etches the gold contact electrode while leaving the other materials, such as the nickel beams, unetched. One exemplary embodiment of step S600 is immersing the wafer in a cyanide or iodine-based gold etchant, such as GE-8111 manufactured by Transene Company, Incorporated, of Danvers, Mass. This etching solution is based on potassium iodide and iodine (KI/I2) chemistry and does not contain cyanide. GE-8111 is acidic with a pH of about 2.5. The pH may be increased by diluting the GE-8111 with an equal part of potassium hydroxide (KOH), and about a sixth part water. Adjusting the pH of the etchant may render it selective to the gold of the electrodes, rather than indiscriminately etching the copper and nickel. In this embodiment, the pH of the etching solution is adjusted to be between about 7.3 and 7.5, by the addition of potassium hydroxide and water to the solution. The etching may be performed at room temperature in a well-ventilated area.
The etch rate for GE-8111 at room temperature is about 3 nm/sec. The substrate is immersed in the etching bath for about 60 sec+/−5 sec, so that approximately 0.18 μm of gold is etched from the surface. Since the dimensions of the gold contact are about 5 μm is length or width, this fraction does not substantially change the overall dimensions of the gold contact electrode. However, the etchant appears to attack each gold grain at a different rate, depending on its crystallographic orientation. As a result, the gold surface is given additional topography, corresponding to the different crystallographic orientations of the crystal grains. As the etchant etches the crystal grains differentially, it leaves a corrugated morphology on the gold surface, wherein some of the grains of the gold are recessed with respect to other grains by at least about 0.05 μm. This may result in a surface morphology characterized by a roughness wavelength of about 0.25 μm and an amplitude of at least about 0.05 μm.
The gold etchant may also remove any impurities or contaminants which may have become lodged on the surface of the contact electrode which may also improve the contact resistance of the contact electrode material. Importantly, the etching, rinsing and drying steps S600-S800 may be performed directly before the device is encapsulated in the lid wafer in step S900. Therefore, the etching may be the last physical or chemical manipulation performed on the before enclosure. In this way, the contact electrodes are as essentially as clean as possible before enclosure in the cavity.
The change in the surface morphology of the contact electrodes is illustrated in
These results may in no way be peculiar to gold, and the methods may be applied to any metal material which forms grains of different crystallographic orientations which can be etched at different rates from the surface of the metal material. For example, the metal materials which may make use of this etch process may include nickel, aluminum, silver, chromium, copper, cadmium, iron, ruthenium, rhodium, and alloys of gold such as gold palladium and gold tungsten.
The contact electrodes in dual substrate switch 1000 are the shunt bar 2700 on the cantilevered beam 2300, which is suspended above the contact electrodes 3700 located on the lower substrate 3000. When the electrostatic drive plate 3600 is energized, it pulls the cantilevered beam 2300 downward until the shunt bar 2700 makes contact with the two lower contact electrodes 3700. The shunt bar 2700 lies across and connects these electrodes electrically, closing the switch. Accordingly, it is the contact resistance of these two surfaces, that of the shunt bar 2700 and contact electrodes 3700, which determines the contact resistance of the switch, and therefore the resistive signal loss across the switch terminals.
The shunt bar 2700 may be formed on the surface of the cantilever beam 2300 by a lift off process more fully described in the incorporated '623 patent application. The shunt bar 2700 may actually be a multilayer comprising first a thin layer of chromium (Cr) for adhesion to the silicon and silicon dioxide surfaces. The Cr layer may be from about 50 Angstroms to about 100 Angstroms in thickness. The Cr layer may be followed by a 100 Angstrom thick layer of molybdenum (Mo), and finally a thicker layer between about 3000 Angstroms to about 1 μM of gold (Au) as the conductive metallization layer. The purpose of the Mo layer is to be a diffusion-barrier between the Cr and the Au, preventing the diffusion of Cr into the Au, which would otherwise dramatically increase the resistance of the Au.
The electrostatic drive plate 3600 and contact electrodes 3700 may be formed on the second, lower substrate 3000 using the same multilayer as was used for the shunt bar 2700 on the first, upper substrate 2000 for the cantilevered beam portion of the dual substrate electrostatic MEMS switch 1000. The metallization multilayer may have similar thicknesses and may be formed using a similar process as that used to form the shunt bar 2700 on the first, upper substrate 2000. This metallization layer may also serve as a seed layer for the deposition of indium for the formation of the alloy seal, as described further in the '623 patent application.
Although the metallization layer may consist of a thin adhesion layer of Cr, and an antidiffusion layer of Mo, followed by a relatively thick layer of Au, it should be understood that this embodiment is exemplary only, and that any material having acceptable electrical transport characteristics may be used as metallization layer of electrostatic drive plate 3600 and contact electrodes 3700. In particular, additional exotic materials may be deposited over the gold such as ruthenium, to achieve particular contact properties, such as low contact resistance and improved wear.
Each of the Cr, Mo and Au layers may be sputter deposited using, for example, an ion beam deposition chamber (IBD). In an IBD chamber, the three targets, Cr, Mo and Au may be rotated into position to deposit the multilayer films without breaking the vacuum. The multilayer may be deposited in the region corresponding to the shunt bar 2700, and also the bond line areas 2800 and 2900 which will form the bond line between the first, upper substrate 2000 and the second, lower substrate 3000 of the dual substrate electrostatic MEMS switch 1000. In areas where the multilayer film is to be removed, it may be deposited over a layer of patterned photoresist, which is subsequently removed using, for example, ultrasonic agitation to loosen the photoresist from the substrate surface. This leaves the multilayer metallization film only in areas 2700, 2800 and 2900 to form the shunt bar and bond line areas, respectively.
The bond line areas 2800 and 2900 of metallization will form, with a layer of indium, an alloy seal which will hermetically seal the first, upper substrate 2000 with the second lower substrate 3000. Details regarding the formation of the shunt bar 2700 and bond line areas 2800 and 2900 and the alloy seal are more fully set forth in the incorporated '623 application.
The etching systems and methods may be applied to this switch in a fashion similar to the first embodiment shown in
The etchant in this embodiment may be the same as in the previous embodiment, however, because the total thickness of the gold film is much thinner than the bulk plated gold of the first embodiment, the etching may be performed for a shorter period of time in order to remove a smaller amount of gold from the shunt bar 2700 and contact electrodes 3700. In this embodiment, a potassium iodide etchant such as GE-8111 may be used to etch the surfaces of gold shunt bar 2700 and gold contact electrodes 3700. However, in this embodiment, since the shunt bar 2700 and gold electrodes 3700 are thin films only about 0.5 μm thick to begin with, the etching is only performed for about 30 seconds before rinsing the shunt bar 2700 and contact electrodes 3700 in deionized water to stop the etching process. This removes a total of about 90 nm of gold from the surface of the shunt bar 2700 and contact electrodes 3700.
Alternatively, the gold film may be made somewhat thicker to budget for the removal of some of the gold material from the etching process. For example, if a final film thickness of about 0.5 microns is desired, an initial film thickness of about 0.7 μm may be deposited, and about 0.2 μm of the gold film may be removed during the etching, leaving the desired film thickness of about 0.5 μm. In this embodiment, the final etching step may be performed for about 60 seconds, rather than 30 seconds as set forth in the previous embodiment, to remove the extra 0.2 μm of material deposited in the thin film.
While a Cr/Mo/Au multilayer is disclosed as being usable for the metallization layer of the shunt bar 2700 and electrodes 3700 it should be understood that this multilayer is exemplary only, and that any other choice of conductive materials or multilayers having suitable electrical transport properties and which can be etched may be used in place of the Cr/Mo/Au multilayer disclosed here. For example, the conductive materials may include nickel, aluminum, silver, chromium, copper, cadmium, iron, ruthenium, rhodium, and alloys of gold such as gold-palladium and gold-tungsten.
In addition, exotic materials such as ruthenium (Ru) can be deposited on top of the Au to improve the switch contact properties, etc. For these other embodiments, an etchant may be chosen which is suitable for etching the exposed metal material of the contact surface. If ruthenium is chosen to cover the top of the gold electrode, for example, it may be etched with Ruthenium Etchant RU-44, also manufactured by Transene Corporation. RU-44 is a ceric ammonium nitrate/nitric acid etching solution for most types of deposited ruthenium films. The precise etch rate will depend upon the ruthenium density and process conditions. However, in general, at room temperature, the etch rates are usually similar to that of GE-8111 for gold, about 3 nm/sec.
Alternatively, the same or similar etch processes may be applied to gold alloys, wherein an additional element has been plated with the gold to increase its hardness, for example. In one embodiment, palladium (Pd) is plated with the gold, to form a gold-palladium contact alloy which may then be etched with the same or similar gold etchant as described above. This may provide a contact surface with improved tribological and wear characteristics, while maintaining outstanding contact resistance.
Furthermore, a switch may be manufactured having at least one contact electrode formed using the etch procedure, while other contact electrode may be formed from a different material with or without using the etch procedure. This may allow a hard contact, such as that made from ruthenium or a gold-palladium alloy, to mate with a softer contact material, such as gold. This may promote low contact resistance while avoiding contact adhesion which may result if both contacts are made from a soft material such as gold.
While various details have been described in conjunction with the exemplary implementations outlined above, various alternatives, modifications, variations, improvements, and/or substantial equivalents, whether known or that are or may be presently unforeseen, may become apparent upon reviewing the foregoing disclosure. While the embodiment described above relates to a microelectromechanical switch, it should be understood that the techniques and designs described above may be applied to any of a number of other devices, including integrated circuits with contact electrodes. While the systems and methods have been described with respect to a liquid etching process, it should be understood that a gaseous or isotropic plasma etch, or a sputter etch may also be used to obtain the desired surface morphology. Furthermore, details related to the specific etch times and dimensions for the contact electrodes are intended to be illustrative only, and the invention is not limited to such embodiments. Accordingly, the exemplary implementations set forth above, are intended to be illustrative, not limiting.