Sacrificial bridges for MEMS fabrication

Abstract

This study discusses sacrificial bridges that are used to release MEMS devices. Before being released, sacrificial bridges connect all the component structures into an integral structure. Solder bump bonding is used to mount the MEMS chip on another chip or a printed circuit board (PCB) and to maintain the alignment among all component structures after removal of the sacrificial bridges. Two types of sacrificial bridges were designed, analyzed and fabricated. The fabrication process—which used low resistivity single crystal silicon (SCS) wafers as the device material—was developed to implement the sacrificial bridges. Novel SCS through silicon vias (TSVs), which interconnect stacked chips, was made using the same process. An electrostatic comb drive actuator was fabricated and mounted onto a PCB. The fabricated actuator was tested to demonstrate the feasibility of the fabrication process, sacrificial bridges and SCS TSVs. The results show that the actuator worked well. Its maximum displacement and resonant frequency were 69.9 µm and 406 Hz, respectively. This method is promising for the delivery of a novel 3D system in package for MEMS devices.