Low-temperature wafer-level transfer bonding

In this paper, we present a new wafer-level transfer bonding technology. The technology can be used to transfer devices or films from one substrate wafer (sacrificial device wafer) to another substrate wafer (target wafer). The transfer bonding technology includes only low-temperature processes; thus, it is compatible with integrated circuits. The process flow consists of low-temperature adhesive bonding followed by sacrificially thinning of the device wafer. The transferred devices/films can be electrically interconnected to the target wafer (e.g., a CMOS wafer) if required. We present three example devices for which we have used the transfer bonding technology. The examples include two polycrystalline silicon structures and a test device for temperature coefficient of resistance measurements of thin-film materials. One of the main advantages of the new transfer bonding technology is that transducers and integrated circuits can be independently processed and optimized on different wafers before integrating the transducers on the integrated circuit wafer. Thus, the transducers can be made of, e.g., monocrystalline silicon or other high-temperature annealed, high-performance materials. Wafer-level transfer bonding can be a competitive alternative to flip-chip bonding, especially for thin-film devices with small feature sizes and when small electrical interconnections (< 3 x 3 mum(2)) between the devices and the target wafer are required.