Low Temperature Wafer Bonding of Silicon Carbide/Aluminum Nitride

Abstract

Because of the wide energy gap material properties and high compatibility with existing silicon material processing, silicon carbide (SiC) has become the preferred material for power management chips that have been used in electric vehicles. On the other hand, aluminum nitride (AlN) material has become the first choice for carrying wafers due to its high strain-resistant mechanical properties, strong dielectric coefficient, excellent thermal conductivity, and high etching resistance. In this study, the surface chemistry of silicon carbide was changed into an AlN-based material to perform wafer bonding processing to develop low-temperature bonding technology for silicon carbide/aluminum nitride materials. We found through experiments that it is quite difficult for a SiC wafer to bond with an AlN wafer even if the surfaces ofthe SiC wafer and the AlN wafer are subjected to conventional surface activation treatment using oxygen plasma or argon plasma. The possible reason is that although the surface of the SiC wafer is bombarded by oxygen or argon plasmas to generate some dangling bonds, the chemical properties of Si-C and Al-N, such as electronegativity, make it difficult to generate chemical bonds between the matching surfaces of SiC/AlN. Through a material modification technology, a high-temperature sputtering method is used to make highly active AlN clusters sputtered from the target directly bond with SiC and finally form a thin AlN layer that strongly adheres to the surface of the SiC wafer. And then through the bonding of AlN/AlN homogeneous materials, although the surface roughness measurement (RMS) cannot satisfy the condition of being less than 5 angstroms for wafer bonding, the goal of low-temperature bonding can be achieved by capillary bonding. Therefore, the SiC surface is changed into an AlN-based thin layer by high-temperature sputtering, which can further chemically bond with the AlN wafer surface by capillary bonding to achieve the low-temperature bonding of SiC/AlN, as shown in Figure 1.Reference1. Shao-Ming Nien, Jian-Long Ruan, Yang-Kuao Kuo, and Benjamin Tien-Hsi Lee, Low-temperature rough-surface wafer bonding with aluminum nitride ceramics implemented by capillary and oxidation actions, Ceramics International, Volume 48, Issue 6, 2022 Figure 1