Wafer bonder improves MEMS gyro

An Applied Microengineering product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jul 20, 2004

The throughput and performance of wafer bonding tools can play a key role in determining the cost of assembly and packaging of MEMS and other microsystems devices.

The throughput and performance of wafer bonding tools can play a key role in determining the cost of assembly and packaging of MEMS and other microsystems devices.

A series of upgrades have been made to a wafer-bonding tool in order to raise throughput without compromising performance.

The improved system was tested during the anodic bonding of glass to silicon for the production of MEMS gyro rate sensors.

Throughput was increased as a result of faster heating and cooling cycles.

The stability of various process parameters was also found to be improved.

As a result, the standard deviation of a measured output parameter of the completed MEMS gyros was significantly lowered.

Process capability was higher, leading to more finished parts falling within specification.

Full details can be found in a technical paper entitled "Improved throughput and process stability for glass and silicon wafer bonding in the production of MEMS devices", by Kevin Stribley, Jim Boyd, Jon Law of Silicon Sensing Systems and Tony Rogers, Nick Aitken of Applied Microengineering.

The paper can be downloaded from the Applied Microengineering website.