LIGA microfabrication

Process

Prof Vinod Jain

9821488869

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What is LIGA ?
• LI thographie → Lithography
• G alvanoformung → Electroforming
• A bformung → Moulding

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What is LIGA?
• The LIGA Process
Lithography Techniques
Electroforming
Mold Fabrication
Analyzing Processing Problems

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Lithography
• In general terms lithography is an image transfer process using …….
Visible and UV Light
Electron Beam
Ion Beam
Laser
Machining
X-ray
• For LIGA
The key consideration is high aspect ratio structures are required
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 POLYMER MEMs
• Polymer materials are increasingly being used in MEMS for
realizing structures, sensors, and actuators.
• Polymers are large, usually chainlike molecules that are built
from small molecules.
• Polymers can be classified into three major classes: fibers,
plastics, and elastomers (rubbers).
• Polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC),
polystyrene, fluorocarbons, epoxies, phenolics, and
polyesters are all classified as plastics.

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 POLYMER MEMs
• Many plastic materials are manufactured by different vendors
and carry different trade (common) names.
• For example, acrylics (polymethylmethacrylate,PMMA) is
known as Acrylite, Diakon, Lucite, and Plexiglass in trade.
• Vendors may incorporate additive substances into polymers to
adjust their physical, chemical, electrical, and thermal
characteristics and to change their appearances.

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 POLYMER MEMs
• Polymers can be categorized into two groups: naturally
occurring polymers and synthetic polymers.
• Naturally occurring polymers—those derived from plants
and animals, include wood, rubber, cotton, wool, leather,
and silk.
• Synthetic polymers are derived from petroleum products.
• Polymers can be classified by its response to temperature.
Thermal plastic polymers (thermalplasts) can be re-melted
and reshaped repeatedly whereas thermal setting polymers
(thermalsets) take on a permanent shape after being melt-
processed once.
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 POLYMER MEMs
The mechanical properties of polymers differ from those of
metals and semiconductors in several major aspects.
• Polymer materials cover a wide range of Young’s modulus. The
modulus of elasticity may be as low as several MPa for highly
elastic polymeric materials, but may run as high as 4 Gpa for
some of the very stiff polymers.
• Maximum tensile strengths for polymers are on the order of
100 MPa, much lower than that of metal and semiconductor
materials.
• Many polymers exhibit viscoelastic behavior. When a force is
applied to it, an instantaneous elastic deformation may occur,
followed by viscous, time dependent strain changes.
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 POLYMER MEMs
• As a result, many polymeric materials are susceptible to time-
dependent deformation under a constantly maintained stress.
Such deformation is called viscoelastic creep.
• The mechanical properties are influenced by temperature,
molecular weight, additives (many proprietary), degree of
crystallinity, and heat treatment history.
• Mechanical properties of certain polymers can change
dramatically over narrow temperature range. For example,
PMMA (acrylics) is totally brittle at 4deg C but extremely
ductile at 60deg C
• The stress-strain relation and the viscoelastic behaviors are
both influenced strongly by the temperature.
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 POLYMER MEMs
• Many organic polymers are dielectric insulators. However, certain
polymers exhibit interesting conducting behaviors. In recent years,
conducting polymer materials are being actively pursued for
making transistors, organic thin film displays, and memory. Such
conductive polymers include polypyrrole, polyaniline, and
polyphenylene sulfide, to name a few.
• Mobility of charge carriers in polymers is still orders of magnitude
lower than that of silicon and compound semiconductor materials.
• At this stage, polymer electronics devices are not able to compete
with semiconductor electronics in terms of performance.

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 POLYMER MEMs
• Polymers can be processed using a large number of techniques,
including injection molding, extrusion, thermoforming, blow
molding, machining, casting, compression molding, rotational
molding, powder metallurgy, sintering, dispersion coating,
fluidized-bed coating, electrostatic coating, calendaring, hot
forming, cold forming, vacuum forming, and vapor deposition.
• Many techniques can be combined with microfabrication.
Note: Sintering or frittage is the process of compacting and forming a solid
mass of material by heat or pressure without melting it to the point of
liquefaction.
Calendaring: Process of smoothing and compressing a material
(notably paper) during production by passing a single continuous sheet
through a number of pairs of heated rolls. The rolls in combination are called
calenders.
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 POLYMER MEMs
• Micromachining technology for MEMS was derived from
integrated circuit fabrication.
• Naturally silicon has been the predominant material choice.
In recent years, polymers have emerged as an important new
class of materials for use in MEMS applications.
• There are a number of unique merits associated with polymer
materials.
• First, the cost of the material is much lower than that of
single-crystal silicon.

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 POLYMER MEMs
• Second, many polymer materials allow unique low-cost, batch-
style fabrication and packaging techniques such as thermal
micro-molding, thermal embossing and injection molding.
• Instead of processing on one wafer at a time, polymer
substrates can potentially be processed in a high-throughput,
roll-to-roll fashion.
• Third, certain polymers offer unique electrical, physical and
chemical properties that are not available in silicon and silicon-
derived materials. Examples of such properties include
mechanical shock tolerance, biocompatibility, and
biodegradability.

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 POLYMER MEMs

• There are barriers for using polymers in MEMS. The

viscoelastic behavior of polymers is undesirable in certain
applications. Many polymer materials have lower glass-
transition and melting temperatures.
• The low thermal stability limits fabrication methods and
application potentials.
• A significant number of polymer materials have been
introduced to MEMS applications in recent years.

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 POLYMER MEMs

• These materials find applications beyond being handle

wafers or adhesive layers, but rather are used as structural
mechanical elements including cantilevers and membranes.
• The list below includes polymers that have been used
successfully and widely for MEMS applications. Some items
in the list represent a family of polymers while others
represent a specific product:

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• Polyimide;
• SU-8;
• Liquid crystal polymer;
• Polydimethylsiloxane;
• Polymethyl methacrylate (also known as acrylics. plexiglass, or
PMMA);
• Parylene (polyparaxylylene);
• Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) and Cytop.

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 SU-8

• The SU-8 is a negative tone, near UV photo-resist first invented

by IBM in the late 1980s , with the main purpose of allowing
high aspect ratio features (715) to be made in thick
photosensitive polymers.
• The photoresist consists of EPON® Resin SU-8 (from Shell
Chemical) as a main component.
• The EPON resin is dissolved in an organic solvent (GBL,
gammabutyrolacton), with the quantity of solvent determining
the viscosity and the range of achievable thickness.

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 SU-8
• Processed layers as thick as can be achieved, offering
tremendous new capabilities for masking, molding, and building
high aspect ratio structures at low cost.
• The cost of SU-8 lithography is considerably lower than that of
other techniques for realizing high aspect ratio micro-strucures,
notably LIGA process and the deep reactive ion etching (DRIE)
• SU-8 has been integrated in a number of micro devices,
including micro-fluid devices, SPM probes, and micro needles.
• It can also serve as a thick sacrificial layer for surface
micromachining.

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 LIGA

Ability to create 3D structures as thick as bulk micromachine devices while remaining the same degree of design
freedom as surface micromachining. Design freedom of surface micromachining and etch depth is similar to bulk
micromachining Microstructures with feature sizes of several microns have been made with a thickness in excess
of 300 micron with the LIGA process. More than 3 micron thickness is easily obtained by the LIGA technique.
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• First we take a substrate and put an electrically conductive layer at the bottom
of the substrate.to do metal plating (at bottom).
• After that you coat photoresist with thickness of 300 to 500 micrometer.
• It is not bare silicon nor ceramic insulator material. You cannot coat PMMA
photoresist as substrate has to be coated with conductive layer because in the
next stage we need to form an electroplating.
• Electroplating means some cathode anode will be there.
• Unless you coat conducting layer, you cannot use either cathode or anode.
Create electrically conducting layer and then deposit the thick photoresist.
• Normal photoresist which we use for VLSI process cannot be used in LIGA
process.
• Here you will need photoresist thickness of the order of 300 to 500
micrometer.
• So that means you need a very high viscous photoresist. Eg. PMMA polymethyl
methacrylate and SU8 is used for LIGA process.

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• Photoresist will give you a thick layer of the film after spinning and
drying.
• So PMMA thickness greater than 500 μm with conductive layer coated
substrate is made.
• Next step 2→ Mask (green color) is exposed with X-ray radiation.
(PMMA with x-ray radiation).
• Normally UV lithography cannot be done here. You need here x-ray
lithography. So x-rays are collimated and it will penetrate to the thick
resist in well-defined sidewall.
• Through the mask x-ray passes. Because here the thickness of the
photoresist is 500 μm and it should be reacted with the radiation.
• So for that you need x-ray radiation. It will penetrate through that thick
layer and complete reaction will take place i.e. polymerization will take
place (contrast red color polymerized).

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• Now step three you have to develop.
• After exposing next step is to develop the photoresist.
• It is a kind of positive photoresist in nature.
• So where you expose, those portion will dissolve.
• Portion where exposed by x-ray radiation has been dissolved by
developer solution of the PMMA.
• Step four→ Metal electroplated on the exposed conductive substrate
surface. So metal electroplating at the bottom conductive layer.
• What is electroplating and which metal you want to use in this thick
developed structure.

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• Electroplating will help you deposit that particular metallic film into the
groups with higher thickness.
• Long time electroplating you can increase the etch rate so you can adjust
the electroplating process (variants) →
by changing concentration of these electroplating solution
by changing temperature
by changing current.
• The current through that electroplating is basically electrolysis process.
• So if you change the current, so the rate of deposition will also change.
• So by adjusting those parameters you can get the thick layer.

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• Step five →the photoresist is removed.
• You see photoresist has been removed and then only the metallic
structures is there fixed on this bottom metal plate.
• So now here the sacrificial techniques are combined with the basic
LIGA process to create partially freed flexure suspended structures or
completely freed devices.
• Now this can be used as a mold. This is one mechanical structure that
easily can be made. You see here thickness is a large and this hinges
can be very small then the aspect ratio is very large so that can be
made using the LIGA process.

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• Do not need that mask aligning
• Do not need the conventional machine which is used in lithography
process.
• But here some important feature which are different from normal
lithography techniques are
- x-radiation
- Electroplating
- Thick photoresist
• These are the differences from normal lithography and etching
process.

SVKM's NMIMS MPSTME

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• LIGA process requirements are x-ray lithography and thick photoresist
PMMA or SU8,
• Second is electroplating with precious controls on current density.
Because the deposition on the metal, on the base plate depends on
the current density, temperature, concentration of the electrolyte
solution, composition of the plating solution to avoid hydrogen
bubbles which may result fetal defects.
• So here all the temperature concentration composition will decide
whether hydrogen bubbles are coming from the deposition process. If
hydrogen bubbles are coming more, then automatically they will
create some holes and that will form a defect into the mold.
• So the rigidity of the mold will be less and it will be porous. So that is
why you have to control or standardize the complete electroplating
process by adjusting temperature, by adjusting current density,
concentration and composition of the plating solution.

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• The lithography galvanoformung and abformung.
• Cast PMMA on metal base with x-ray radiation and after that develop
the PMMA solution. After developing you get the holes and then
electroplate through PMMA and after electroplating photoresist is
completely removed, dissolved to get this structure separate metal
from PMMA.
• This is the LIGA micromachining process which is used now days for
making mechanical structure, mostly metallic structure.
• You cannot get ceramic structure out of that because you see
electroplating is only for metal deposition. If you want to have, then
you have to go for this LIGA process.

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