Lecture 2

MICROSYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Dr.-Ing. Ronny Gerbach

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 Course Outline

1) Introduction
2) Clean Rooms and Yield
3) Materials for Microsystem Engineering
4) Thin Film Technology
5) Lithography
6) MEMS Technologies
7) Introduction into Packaging Technologies
8) Alternative Approaches for Microsystem Engineering

Introduction -2-
 Course Outline

1) Introduction
 Scaling of Physical Effects

2) Clean Rooms and Yield

3) Materials for Microsystem Engineering
4) Thin Film Technology
5) Lithography
6) MEMS Technologies
7) Introduction into Packaging Technologies
8) Alternative Approaches for Microsystem Engineering

Introduction -3-
 What should you know?

■ What is the scaling factor of a system?

■ How can the scaling factor be calculated?
■ Are constants always constant in real?
■ What is the effect of scaling on length, surfaces and volume?
■ Which kind of “new” effects should be considered in microsystem
engineering?
■ Friction and wear
■ Surface tension and countermeasures

Scaling of Physical Effects -4-

 Motivation

■ Assessment of physical effects is caused by our (macroscopic)

experiences.
■ What will happen in microscale dimensions?

Effects of scaling are visible in nature

■ Example: Water strider

■ Why doesn’t this animal sink?
■ Why bigger animals can’t do this?

Scaling of Physical Effects -5-

 What does scaling mean?

Scaling = similar reduction of the size of a system or structure

1 : 1/100
1 : s

But: Not all properties will remain constant.

Scaling of Physical Effects -6-

 Scaling Factors

■ Approach: Introduction of a scaling factor 𝑠

Example: length scaling 𝐿′ = 𝑠 𝐿
For a size reduction: 𝑠<1
The scaling influences all dimension-depended parameters of a system.

■ Target: Determination of an overall scaling factor 𝑆 for a

microsystem

■ Example: Scaling of the electrical resistance of a metal line

conducting paths used in microsystems as
𝑙
■ Electrical connection of functional components 𝑅 = 𝜌∙
■ Heater elements in sensors or actuators
𝐴
■ Electrical resistance sensor (e.g. temperature sensor)

Scaling of Physical Effects -7-

 System Technological Approach
“Physical interpretation” of the scaling of the resistance
 R increases with 𝑆′𝑅 = 1
𝑠

Considering system technological aspects:

■ Width of the metal line 𝑏  scales with 𝑠 (reference)
■ Height ℎ  scales (approximately) with width because
the achievable aspect ratio limits the thickness
■ Length 𝑙  doesn’t scale with 𝑠 in most cases
■ Size reduction enables higher integration
■ Chip area remains almost constant
■ Increase of the relative line width

System scaling factor: 𝑆′𝑅 = 1 ≤ 𝑆𝑅 ≤ 1

𝑠 𝑠2

Scaling of Physical Effects -8-

 Scaling of Material Properties

■ In macroscopic world  assumption of constant material parameters

listed in technical tables (e.g. electrical resistivity)
■ Basis: measurement of parameters of bulk materials (e.g. casted or
pultruded metals)
■ Methods for material deposition in microsystem engineering
■ Vacuum evaporation Different material
characteristics
■ Physical vapor deposition mono- or polycrystalline materials,
■ Chemical vapor deposition amorphous layers, thin layers

 Result: Material properties depend on their microstructure as well as

on their deposition method

Scaling of Physical Effects -9-

 Variation of Material Parameters

■ Description of the morphology of deposited materials by

Structure Zone Modell by Thornton
■ Example: sputtered layers (Process pressures between 10–400mbar)

1 - Porous layers with

low density
T - Filamentary, tightly
packed structure,
flat surface
2 - Columnar structure
with high packaging
density, low
roughness
3 - Recrystallized
microstructure

𝑇… substrate temperature
𝑇𝑚 … melting temperature of the deposited material

Scaling of Physical Effects -10-

 Summary: Scaling of Systems

Consideration of three aspects for scaling of systems

■ Scaling of the physical effect  physical scaling factor
■ Systemic aspects
■ Material parameters  process related properties

Result: System scaling factor

Additional: Shifting of the meaning of effects

Reason: ratio between
Length – Area - Volume

Scaling of Physical Effects -11-

 Example: Water strider

■ Why doesn’t this animal sink?

■ Small mass
■ Large surface of the legs
■ Use of the surface tension of water
■ Why bigger animals can’t do this?
■ Increase of surface with factor 1 𝑠
correspondent to the scaling of
mass and surface needed

Scaling of Physical Effects -12-

 Example: current density of metal lines

■ Electrical wire (cross section 1 mm2 )

■ max. allowed current: 10 A
■ current density: 10 A/mm2
■ CMOS metal line (width 2 µm x height 0.5 µm)
■ max. allowed current: 1 mA
■ current density: 1000 A/mm2

Electrical stable because

■ good heat dissipation because of small thickness
■ large surface of the metal line
■ no resistance increase because of heating up
■ risk of electromigration (transport of material caused by the
gradual movement of the ions)

Scaling of Physical Effects -13-

 Surface Effect Wear in Microsystems

■ Force / energy effort needed to overcome friction

■ Friction improves surface quality because of polishing
■ Removed material is abrasive and causes additional defects
■ Particular effected: rotating elements or gearings

Consequences:
■ Increase of bearing play
■ “Jamming” of movable parts
■ Shorts in electrical actors
■ Failure of weak components

Scaling of Physical Effects -14-

 Effect of Surface Tension - Stiction

■ Surface tension in the macroscopic world:

■ Water strider
■ (Permanent) bonding of foils on glas
■ Adhesion of thin glass plates with an intermediate water layer
■ What happens in microscale dimensions?
■ Surface – volume scaling
■ Reduced inertia
■ Plane surfaces with roughness down to an atomic scale
■ Reduced distance between surfaces (down to nm scale)

Scaling of Physical Effects -15-

Countermeasures for Stiction

■ Design related measures:

■ Integration of dimples
■ Process related measures:
■ Deposition of hydrophobic coating (e.g. HMDS or PTFE)
■ Use of dry etch processes instead of wet etch processes
■ Use of solvents with low surface energy (e.g. methanol or acetone)
■ Introduction of a sublimation process (process flow: exchange of
solvent, freezing, sublimation)
■ Introduction of a supercritical drying process with CO2
■ Critical point of water at 374 °C and 22 Mpa
■ Critical point of CO2 at 31 °C and 7.38 MPa

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 Course Outline

1) Introduction
2) Clean Rooms and Yield
3) Materials for Microsystem Engineering
4) Thin Film Technology
5) Lithography
6) MEMS Technologies
7) Introduction into Packaging Technologies
8) Alternative Approaches for Microsystem Engineering

Clean Rooms and Yield -17-

 Technology Cycle in MSE and Microelectronics
Substrate with residuals or
contaminations Cleaning or stripping of
resist pattern from previous cycle

Thin film deposition /

growth

According complexity´5-40
lithographic steps needed
Lithography

Patterning (etching)

Diced / singulated dies or

packaged devices Resist removal

■ Minimum feature size:

■ Microelectronics: down to 10 nm
■ Microsystem engineering: micrometer range (>2 µm)

Clean Rooms and Yield -18-

 Root Causes for Defects and Contaminations

■ Important: surface quality of the wafer substrate

Surface morphology Chemical contamination

■ Flatness, roughness of ■ caused by process media
wafer surface and materials, previous
manufacturing steps
 Wafer manufacturing
 Cleaning processes

Particles
■ existent in the air
■ limitation of number and size
■ Critical particle size: 1/10 of min. feature size
 Manufacturing in cleanroom environment

Clean Rooms and Yield -19-

 Cleanroom Technologies

Function of cleanrooms:
1) Preparation of (filtered) air less of particles
2) Supply with needed process media in needed chemical purity
■ Process gases and materials
■ Compressed air and vacuum
■ Deionized water, cooling water
■ Power supply
3) Waste disposal
■ Process exhaust air (can be toxic)
■ Waste water

Clean Rooms and Yield -20-

 Definition of Clean Room Classes
■ Manufacturing in microelectronics  ISO 1 – ISO 3
■ Manufacturing in microsystem engineering  ISO 4 – ISO 7

Cleanroom class Allowed particles per m3

ISO FED 209D* FED 209E 0.1 µm 0.3 µm 0.5 µm
ISO 1 10
ISO 2 100 10 4
ISO 3 1 M1.5 1000 102 35
ISO 4 10 M2.5 10000 1020 352
ISO 5 100 M3.5 100000 10200 3520
ISO 6 1000 M4.5 1000000 102000 35200
ISO 7 10000 M5.5 352000
ISO 8 100000 M6.5 3520000
ISO 9 35200000

* Number of the cleanroom class results from the number of allowed particles with
size 0.5 µm per cubic foot.

Clean Rooms and Yield -21-

 Required Clean Room Classes in MSE

Process Step Clean room class

Photolithography ISO 4… ISO 5
Class 10…100
Deposition processes ISO 5… ISO 6
Class 100…1000
Wet chemical processes (etching, cleaning) ISO 5… ISO 6
Class 100…1000
Plasma processes (etching, cleaning) ISO 6… ISO 7
Class 1000…10000
Analytics and measuring equipment ISO 6… ISO 7
Class 1000…10000
Service areas (media supply, disposal, ISO 6… ISO 7
electronics equipment,…) Class 1000…10000

Clean Rooms and Yield -22-

 Functional Principle of Clean Rooms
Fresh air

Constant exchange of
cleanroom air with fresh
air from outside
Filter ceiling

„Double“ floor

 Main purpose: operation of clean room widely free of particles

Clean Rooms and Yield -23-

 Clean Room Concepts – Comb Structure
■ Fixed separation into clean and grey room areas
■ Equipment is hidden in wall  load port is accessible from white room
micro-environment

+ -

 Main purpose: Minimization particle introduction or generation

because of equipment, tools, operators and media supply
Clean Rooms and Yield -24-
 Clean Room Concepts – Ballroom Structure
■ Large area clean rooms without
supports  flexible use
■ Clean room class can be adapted
by number and density of filter fan
units (FFU)

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Inside-Look-Intel-
and-Micron-25nm-Flash-Memory-Production/Inside-Fab

 Main purpose: minimization

particle introduction or
generation because of
equipment, tools, operators
and media supply
Clean Rooms and Yield -25-
 Particulate Sources in Clean Rooms

Type of Source Problem caused

Contamination
Dust Humans, air, abrasion (e.g. “Masking” during
from equipment or wafers) lithographic processes
Molecular Oil, polymer residual (e.g. Adhesion
photoresists)
Ionic Skin contact, salt, water Electrically active
Atomic Heavy metals from abrasion Electrically active
and etching

 Main purpose: Monitoring of particle density in clean rooms

■ Number of particles
■ Size of particles
Clean Rooms and Yield -26-
 Humans as Particulate Source

■ Largest source of particulate contamination are human beings.

■ Ignoring special behavioral rules for clean rooms may decrease the
cleanroom specification by two classes.
■ Requirement of special clean room clothes and behavioral rules

Emission of particulates > 0.5µm per minute at different activities

Type of Movement Street Clothes One part protection

garment with head, mouth
and nose coverage
Sitting without movement 3 ∙ 105 7 ∙ 103
moving head 6 ∙ 105 1 ∙ 104
Body movement 1 ∙ 106 3 ∙ 104
Slow walking 3 ∙ 106 5 ∙ 104
Fast walking 3 ∙ 106 1 ∙ 105

Clean Rooms and Yield -27-

 Cleanroom Clothing

Clean Rooms and Yield -28-

 Cleanroom Rules
■ Behavior:
■ Avoid fast moving in clean rooms
■ Don’t smoke at least 2 h before entering a clean room
■ Clothing:
■ Wear special cleanroom clothing (dress from top to bottom)
■ Watch your dress code before entering the clean room
■ Avoid direct skin contact to substrates and equipment
■ Wear gloves and change them if they could be damaged or polluted (even it is not
visible)
■ Writing:
■ Use special non-abrasive cleanroom pens
■ Use clean room paper (normal paper must be wrapped in foil)
■ In general:
■ Avoid any kind of abrasive material processing
■ Don’t break silicon wafers or scrub at wafers
■ Clean everything before bringing in clean rooms unless it is “double sealed”

Clean Rooms and Yield -29-

 Wafer Cleaning Processes

■ Root causes of wafer contaminations

■ Particles  Clean room and its quality
■ Impureness of process media  Use of pure gases
■ Previous manufacturing steps

Particles Organic Metallic Native oxide

residues residues layers

■ Requirement of established cleaning procedure

■ Established cleaning procedures:
■ Physical cleaning processes (e.g. scrubber tools, CO2-cleaning)
■ Chemical cleaning processes

Clean Rooms and Yield -30-

 Solvents for Wet-Chemical Wafer Cleaning
■ Wafer cleaning requires process sequence of individual cleaning steps
using different solvents (e.g. RCA cleaning sequence)
■ Rinsing between each cleaning step with deionized water
■ Wafer drying after cleaning needed
■ Spin-Rinse-Dryer (SRD)  risk of stiction and damaging of movable structures
■ Alternative drying methods  e.g. sublimation or supercritical drying process

Solvent Typical process Application

parameters
NH4OH / H2O2 / H2O 70…80 °C, 5…10 min Remove of organic contaminations (e.g.
resist materials) and metals (Cu, Ag, Ni,
Co, Cd)
HNO3 (70%) / H2O 80…100 °C, 7…10 min Remove of organic and inorganic
materials
HF / Acetone 1 min Remove of oxidation layers
HCl / H2O2 / H2O 80 °C, 10 min Remove of metals (Au, Cu, Cr, Fe, Na+)
HF (10…48 %) / H2O 23 °C, 5…30 s Remove of native SiO2

Clean Rooms and Yield -31-

 Yield during MEMS Manufacturing

■ What is yield 𝑌? Number of good dies per wafer

𝑌=
Overall number of dies per wafer
■ Root causes of
■ Defect density in general
■ Defect density by uncontrolled equipment status
■ Defect density by particulate contaminated solvents, liquids
■ Loss of control of a process  SPC, daily test routines, run-to-run control
schemes
■ Process window too small
■ Incorrect processing which is not visible inline

■ Main part of yield loss: statistically distributed defects during

lithographic processes
𝑌 = 1 + 𝐴 𝐷 −𝑁 or 𝑌 = 1−𝐴𝐷 𝑁
with 𝐷 as defect density (defects per wafer) and 𝐴 as chip size

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 Defect Inspection

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 Automated Visual Inspection
Realized by image /
pattern recognition
1) Teaching of image
correlation software
 good die
2) Definition of failure
categories
3) Definition of
inspection areas per
die and magnification
for inspection
4) Inspection of the
complete wafer with
the developed
Resist residues after development inspection program

Clean Rooms and Yield -34-