Glass frit bonding is a largely popular method of encapsulating MEMS devices in the industry today. It's popularity is due to relatively low processing temperature, tunability of thermal coefficient of expansion, and hermetic sealing. However, glass frit bonding requires a large amount of space, sometimes as much as several times the size of the MEMS device itself. This attribute is largely responsible for limiting further scalability and miniaturization of individual dies. This research project aims (1) to take a deeper look into the shortcomings of the existing glass frit bonding technique, (2) to identify novel packaging materials and/or techniques for bonding, and (3) to gain a deeper understanding of the stresses induced during and after the packaging process. The long-term objective of this project is to understand and engineer the physics of micro/macro bonding interface to improve the system performances in terms of stability, reliability, offset.
Project end date: 02/03/10