Conformal thin film packaging for sic sensor circuits in harsh environments
In this investigation sputtered silicon carbide annealed at 300°C for one hour is used as a conformal thin film package. A RF magnetron sputterer was used to deposit 500 nm silicon carbide films on gold metal structures on alumina wafers. To determine the reliability and resistance to immersion in harsh environments, samples were submerged in gold etchant for 24 hours, in BOE for 24 hours, and in an O2 plasma etch for one hour. The adhesion strength of the thin film was measured by a pull test before and after the chemical immersion, which indicated that the film has an adhesion strength better than 108 N/m2; this is similar to the adhesion of the gold layer to the alumina wafer. MIM capacitors are used to determine the dielectric constant, which is dependent on the SiC anneal temperature. Finally, to demonstrate that the SiC, conformal, thin film may be used to package RF circuits and sensors, an LC resonator circuit was fabricated and tested with and without the conformal SiC thin film packaging. The results indicate that the SiC coating adds no appreciable degradation to the circuits RF performance.
PVD silicon carbide as a thin film packaging technology for antennas on LCP substrates for harsh environments
This paper describes an effort to develop a thin film packaging technology for microfabricated planar antennas on polymeric substrates based on silicon carbide (SiC) films deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD). The antennas are coplanar waveguide fed dual frequency folded slot antennas fabricated on liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrates. The PVD SiC thin films were deposited directly onto the antennas by RF sputtering at room temperature at a chamber pressure of 30 mTorr and a power level of 300 W. The SiC film thickness is 450 nm. The return loss and radiation patterns were measured before and after the SiC-coated antennas were submerged into perchloric acid for 1 hour. No degradation in RF performance or physical integrity of the antenna was observed.
Effects of O/sub 2//C/sub 2/F/sub 6/ plasma descum with RF cleaning on via formation in MCM-D substrate using photosensitive BCB
In this paper, we present the effect of plasma descum by O/sub 2//C/sub 2/F/sub 6/ gas mixture on the via formation of photosensitive BCB layer and compare it with that of RF cleaning. Test vehicle was fabricated on Si wafer with Cu/photosensitive BCB layer structure and ECR-CVD system was used to descum the via. Residues at via bottom after the descum process were investigated by AES (auger electron microscope) and SEM (scanning electron microscope). It is shown in this work that O/sub 2//C/sub 2/F/sub 6/ plasma etching and the RF cleaning are effective for organic C, native C respectively, therefore the via descum by a combination of plasma etching with O/sub 2//C/sub 2/F/sub 6/ gas mixture and RF cleaning can efficiently remove the via residues.