For many applications it is inevitable to protect MEMS devices against environmental impacts like humidity which can affect their performance. Moreover recent publications demonstrates that micro mirrors can achieve very large optical scan angles at moderate driving voltages even exceeding 100 degrees when hermetically sealed under vacuum. While discrete chips may be evacuated and sealed on single die level using small can packages like TO housings, it is obvious that for high volume production a much more economical solution for the realisation of transparent optical packages already on wafer level must be developed. However, since any laser beam crossing a transparent glass surface is partly reflected even when anti-reflective coatings are applied, the construction of a wafer level optical housing suitable for laser projection purpose requires more than the integration of simple plane glass cap. The use of inclined optical windows avoids the occurrence of intense reflections of the incident laser beam in the projected images. This paper describes a unique technology to fabricate glass packages with inclined optical windows for micro mirrors on 8 inch wafers. The new process uses a high temperature glass forming process based on subsequent wafer bonding. A borosilicate glass wafer is bonded together with two structured silicon wafers. By grinding both sides of the wafer stack, a pattern of isolated silicon structures is defined. This preprocessed glass wafer is bonded thereon on a third structured silicon wafer, wherein the silicon islands are inserted into the cavities. By setting a defined pressure level inside the cavities during the final wafer bonding, the silicon glass stack extruded and it is out of plane during a subsequent annealing process at temperatures above the softening point of the glass. Finally the silicon is selectively removed in a wet etching process. This technique allows the fabrication of 8 inch glass wafers with oblique optical surfaces with surface roughness <1 nm and an evenness of < 300 nm.

Date Published: 5 March 2013
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 8613, Advanced Fabrication Technologies for Micro/Nano Optics and Photonics VI, 861319 (5 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2001760

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8613:
Advanced Fabrication Technologies for Micro/Nano Optics and Photonics VI
Georg von Freymann; Winston V. Schoenfeld; Raymond C. Rumpf, Editor(s)