Morphologies of Reactive Nanolayer Stacks Sputtered on Ceramic LTCC Substrates Having a Micrometer Scale Surface Roughness

Abstract

The deposition of reactive multilayer systems (RMS) has been investigated on low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) substrates having different surface morphologies. This study analyses the morphologies of RMS layers that were deposited on glass ceramic LTCC substrates. Different surface morphologies were prepared through pretreatments of the LTCC surface. The considered surfaces encompass an untreated natural LTCC surface, a modified sintered LTCC surface by laser ablation, a surface with a deposited metallization layer and finally, a surface with an additional solder layer put on the deposited metallization layer. The different pretreatments lead to significant differences in the roughness of the LTCC substrates, resulting in different reaction velocities and peak temperatures on the various surface morphologies after the RMS’s reaction. As a result, different grades of structural integrity (lift‐off, crack formation) between the reacted RMS layer and the LTCC were observed.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.