A substrate-independent wafer transfer technique for surface-micromachined devices

Abstract

We report on a new wafer transfer technique that can remove and transfer surface-micromachined layers to application-specific substrates. This process, however, is not limited to only MEMS devices and can be applicable to other semiconductor devices. Successful transfer of a 1 cm/spl times/1 cm MEMS chip with electrostatically actuated curled cantilever switches to a transparent quartz substrate has been demonstrated. Pull-in voltage for transferred devices is 31 V compared with 23 V for devices on standard silicon substrates.