Glass-to-glass anodic bonding with standard IC technology thin films as intermediate layers

Glass-to-glass wafer bonding has recently attracted considerable interest. Especially for liquid manipulation applications and on-chip chemical analysis systems, all-glass sealed channels with integrated metal electrodes are very attractive. In this paper, we present a novel anodic bonding process in which the temperature does not exceed 400 degrees C. This is a crucial requirement if metal patterns are present on the wafers. A number of thin film materials available in most conventional IC processes deposited on the glass wafers have been tested as intermediate bonding layers. Successful bonding is obtained for various layer combinations and an explanation of the bonding mechanism is given. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.