Microfabrication

INEX has established a multi-material microfabrication facility with 400 m² of class 100 cleanroom for front-end processing, and 150 m² of class 10,000 cleanroom with local class 100 hoods where required for back-end processing, packaging, test and characterisation.

Its equipment set was upgraded from a 100mm wafer platform in early 2006. INEX now operates as standard on a 150mm wafer platform, the globally dominant platform for microsystems development and production.

Much of its equipment can also accommodate 100mm wafers. In addition, INEX has considerable experience in handing small and/or exotic materials (e.g. diamond, and routinely processes small (e.g. mm-sized), irregular and thin film materials in its wafer processing equipment through use of appropriate carrier wafers and sample holders.

 

Capability

Substrates

  • 150 mm silicon, SOI, glass and quartz wafers (standard)
  • 100/75 mm silicon, SOI, glass and quartz wafers
  • Single wafers or bonded pairs
  • Irregular/small substrates (e.g. diamond)
  • Polyimide film and other flexible substrates

Lithography

  • Single and double-sided contact aligners (1:1)

    • Minimum feature size: 2.5 µm
    • Alignment accuracy +/- 1 µm (front side align ), +/- 2 µm (front to back align)
  • Stepper (1:1)
    • Minimum feature size: ~1 µm
    • Overlay accuracy: 0.16 µm
  • E-beam writer
    • Minimum feature size ~20 nm
    • Overlay & stitching accuracy ~40 nm
  • HMDS vapour priming
  • Spin coating of photoresists and polyimides
  • Puddle, spray or tank development
  • Hotplate and oven baking
  • Deep UV resist treatment
  • Lift-off process (image reversal and bi-layer)

Wafer Bonding

  • Ultrasonic wafer cleaning station
  • Silicon fusion bonding
  • Anodic bonding
  • Adhesive wafer bonding
  • Eutectic bonding
  • Bonding at atmospheric pressure or vacuum (to 10-5 mbar)
  • Aligned wafer bonding with < 10 µm accuracy

Plasma Etching

  • DRIE of silicon (Bosch process)
  • DRIE of silicon dioxide and glass (ICP source)
  • RIE of silicon dioxide, nitride, poly-silicon, polyimide and PZT
  • Metal etching (ICP source)
  • Emission and optical end-point detectors
  • Resist stripping and descum

Wet Processing

  • Dedicated wet process stations for solvent, acid and alkali processing
  • Anisotropic silicon etching (TMAH and KOH)
  • HF etching of silicon dioxide and glass
  • Wet etching of metals (e.g. Ti, Cr, Au, Cu, NiCr and Al)
  • Wafer cleaning (RCA, Piranha and solvent)
  • Solvent tools for lift-off and resist stripping
  • Photo-mask cleaning
  • HF release etch with supercritical CO2 drying

Metallisation

  • DC & RF sputtering of metals (e.g. Al, Ti, Cr, Pt, Au, Cu and NiCr)
  • E-beam evaporation of metals (e.g. Cr, Au, Ti, Al)
  • DC and pulse plating of metals (Au, Ni, Pt and Cu)

Thermal Processing

  • Wet oxidation of silicon
  • Dry oxidation of silicon
  • High temperature anneal (N2 or O2 atmosphere)

CVD Processing

  • LPCVD deposition of poly and amorphous silicon (un-doped)
  • High and low frequency PECVD deposition of silicon oxide, nitride oxy-nitride and amorphous silicon
  • Mixed frequency PECVD deposition of silicon nitride (low stress)

Polymer Processing

  • Hot embossing and nano-imprinting
  • PDMS casting
  • Polymer micro-milling

Equipment

Lithography

  • Ultratech 1500 stepper
  • EVG 620 contact/bond aligner
  • Karl Suss MA-6 aligner
  • Raith 150 e-beam writer
  • EVG 101 spin coat station
  • EMS 5000 spin coater
  • Headway spin coater
  • EVG 102 develop station
  • Solitech S110 D spray develop tool
  • YES 310 HMDS and image reversal oven
  • EMS hotplates
  • Lab-line oven
  • Dispatch LLD1 polyimide oven
  • Fusion M150PC DUV flood exposure tool
  • Fortex dry film laminator

Wafer Bonding & Embossing

  • EVG 301 wafer cleaner
  • EVG 501 wafer bonder
  • EVG 520 hot embosser
  • Logitech single station wafer bonder

Plasma Processing

  • STS ASEPHRMP (advanced silicon etcher)
  • STS AOE (advanced oxide etcher)
  • STS ICP cluster (metal etcher)
  • Tegal 902e reactive ion etcher
  • STS dual frequency PECVD
  • Oxford Plasmalab 80+ PECVD
  • Tepla 300 microwave asher

Wet Processing

  • Larmaflo wet stations
  • Felcon solvent station
  • MAG acid wet station
  • MAG alkali wet station
  • Expert Development electroplating system
  • Semitool 470S and 870S SRDs
  • SSEC 203 solvent processor

Physical Vapour Deposition

  • Balzers BAK550 e-beam evaporator
  • BOC-Edwards Auto 500 e-beam evaporator
  • BOC-Edwards Auto 500 sputterer
  • Nordiko sputterer
  • MRC 943 sputterer

Furnaces

  • Tempress TSC603 furnace stack
  • Wellman anneal furnace

Examples

             

Through wafer (400 µm) DRIE with 1-2° side wall                               Optical layers with RI control better than +/-
angle control across the surface of a 100mm wafer.                            0.005 across the surface of a 150mm wafer.


Metal tracks fabricated (deposition, lithography and
etch) on free-standing 8 µm polyimide film.