Thisreviewcoversthekeypapersrelatingtothetheory,techniques and quantification of hydrophilically activated silicon wafer bonding. This begins with a review of the history and development of the art. Bond strength characterization is then reviewed followed first by models of physical deformation and then by plasma and radical activation techniques. In the interests of clarity and succinctness this review is not an attempt to exhaustively catalog all direct bonding wafer literature. Excluded are hydrophobic and UHV bonding, and the many papers applying bonding techniques to differing combinations of wafer materials. This paper concludes with a summery of the state of the art of direct wafer bonding and a summation of the current wafer-bonding model derived from the papers reviewed.

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A Review of Hydrophilic Silicon Wafer Bonding

Adhesion forces between submicrometer-sized silicate grains play a crucial role in the formation of silicate dust agglomerates, rocky planetesimals, and terrestrial planets. The surface energy of silicate dust particles is the key to their adhesion and rolling forces in a theoretical model based on the contact mechanics. Here we revisit the cohesion of amorphous silica spheres by compiling available data on the surface energy for hydrophilic amorphous silica in various circumstances. It turned out that the surface energy for hydrophilic amorphous silica in a vacuum is a factor of 10 higher than previously assumed. Therefore, the previous theoretical models underestimated the critical velocity for the sticking of amorphous silica spheres, as well as the rolling friction forces between them. With the most plausible value of the surface energy for amorphous silica spheres, theoretical models based on the contact mechanics are in harmony with laboratory experiments. Consequently, we conclude that silicate grains with a radius of $0.1~\mu$m could grow to planetesimals via coagulation in a protoplanetary disk. We argue that the coagulation growth of silicate grains in a molecular cloud is advanced either by organic mantles rather than icy mantles or, if there are no mantles, by nanometer-sized grain radius.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/812/1/67/pdf

Cohesion of amorphous silica spheres: toward a better understanding of the coagulation growth of silicate dust aggregates

Cohesion of Amorphous Silica Spheres: Toward a Better Understanding of the Coagulation Growth of Silicate Dust Aggregates

Direct bonding is now a well-known technique to join two flat surfaces without any additional material. This technique is used in many applications and especially in SOI (Silicon-On-Insulator) elaboration or in some backside imager manufacturing processes which are now almost in mass production. Direct bonding mechanism study is then very important in order to clearly understand this bonding behavior. Especially in the case of silicon or silicon dioxide hydrophilic surface, the role of water is essential. Water could lead to lots of different reactions at the bonding interface and especially the water stress corrosion could play an important role in the direct bonding mechanism. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-ND, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is not changed in any way and is properly cited. For permission for commercial reuse, please email: oa@electrochem.org. [DOI: 10.1149/2.0031505jss] All rights reserved.

Water Stress Corrosion in Bonded Structures

Au–Au surface activated bonding is promising for room-temperature bonding. The use of Ar plasma vs. O2 plasma for pretreatment was investigated for room-temperature wafer-scale Au–Au bonding using ultrathin Au films (<50 nm) in ambient air. The main difference between Ar plasma and O2 plasma is their surface activation mechanism: physical etching and chemical reaction, respectively. Destructive razor blade testing revealed that the bonding strength of samples obtained using Ar plasma treatment was higher than the strength of bulk Si (surface energy of bulk Si: 2.5 J/m2), while that of samples obtained using O2 plasma treatment was low (surface energy: 0.1–0.2 J/m2). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis revealed that a gold oxide (Au2O3) layer readily formed with O2 plasma treatment, and this layer impeded Au–Au bonding. Thermal desorption spectroscopy analysis revealed that Au2O3 thermally desorbed around 110 °C. Annealing of O2 plasma-treated samples up to 150 °C before bonding increased the bonding strength from 0.1 to 2.5 J/m2 due to Au2O3 decomposition.

/pdf/comparison-of-argon-and-oxygen-plasma-treatments-for-ambient-4m6bbq5pal.pdf

Comparison of Argon and Oxygen Plasma Treatments for Ambient Room-Temperature Wafer-Scale Au⁻Au Bonding Using Ultrathin Au Films

Bonding energy represents an important parameter for direct bonding applications as well as for the elaboration of physical mechanisms at bonding interfaces. Measurement of bonding energy using double cantilever beam (DCB) under prescribed displacement is the most used technique thanks to its simplicity. The measurements are typically done in standard atmosphere with relative humidity above 30%. Therefore, the obtained bonding energies are strongly impacted by the water stress corrosion at the bonding interfaces. This paper presents measurements of bonding energies of directly bonded silicon wafers under anhydrous nitrogen conditions in order to prevent the water stress corrosion effect. It is shown that the measurements under anhydrous nitrogen conditions (less than 0.2 ppm of water in nitrogen) lead to high stable debonding lengths under static load and to higher bonding energies compared to the values measured under standard ambient conditions. Moreover, the bonding energies of Si/SiO2 or SiO2/SiO2 bonding interfaces are measured overall the classical post bond annealing temperature range. These new results allow to revisit the reported bonding mechanisms and to highlight physical and chemical phenomena in the absence of stress corrosion effect.

J. Da Fonseca

Papers

Measurement of bonding energy in an anhydrous nitrogen atmosphere and its application to silicon direct bonding technology