A novel wafer-level hermetic packaging for MEMS devices

Some emerging microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices such as high-performance inertial sensors and high-speed actuators must be operated in a high vacuum and in order to create this vacuum environment, specific packaging is required. To satisfy this demand, this paper presents a novel method for hermetic and near-vacuum packaging of MEMS devices. We use wafer-level bonding technology to combine with vacuum packaging, simultaneously. For this packaging solution, the wafers with air-guided micro-through-holes were placed on a custom-built design housed in a vacuum chamber maintained at a low-pressure environment of sub-10 mtorr. Packaging structure is then sealed by solder ball reflow process with the lower heating temperature of 300 degrees C to fill up micro-through-hole. Experimental results shown the hermetical packaging technique using solder sealing is adapted to the wafer-level microfabrication process for MEMS devices and can achieve better yield and performance. Thus, this technique is very useful for many applications with high performance and low packaging cost can be obtained due to wafer-level processing.