Direct bonding of Si wafer pairs with SiO2 and Si3N4 films with a fast linear annealing

2000 Angstrom-SiO2/Si(100) and 560 Angstrom-Si3N4/Si(1 0 0) wafers, that are 10 cm in diameter, were directly bonded using a rapid thermal annealing method, so-called fast linear annealing (FLA), in which two wafers scanned with a high-power halogen lamp. It was demonstrated that at lamp power of 550 W, corresponding to the surface temperature of similar to450degreesC, the measured bonded area was close to 100%. At the same lamp power, the bond strength of the SiO2\\i(3)N(4) wafer pair reached 2500 mJ/m(2), which was attained only above 1000degreesC with conventional furnace annealing for 2 h. The results clearly show that the FLA method is far superior in producing high-quality directly bonded Si wafer pairs with SiO2 and Si3N4 films (Si/SiO2\\i(3)N(4)/Si) compared to the conventional method. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.