4.1 CHAPTER SCOPE

The goal of packaging is to combine MEMS and other components into a product suitable for being used, either in the next level of assembly or perhaps as a final product by itself. Micromachining has been promoted based partly on its leveraging of the technologies and processes in integrated circuit manufacturing. Likewise, the packaging techniques for MEMS will be based mainly in IC packaging, for several reasons. First, as for MEMS fabrication, there is a substantial base of manufacturing, tooling and experience that can be used to great advantage. Second, most MEMS devices will be integrated with electronics, optics and sensors, in either the same package or the same system, and the integration will be easier if common packaging processes meeting common standards are used. The end user may not even know that some hand-held products have a MEMS device inside them, but they will expect that the product withstand the normal range of use and handling that common electronics such as a PDA or personal stereo survive daily. Similarly, in an assembly plant the production team expects that a package will make it through the wave-solder machine without special handling. The microsystem may have a MEMS device inside, but that fact should not, and generally cannot, change how the microsystem will be treated.

The purpose of this chapter is to show how common IC packaging processes can be applied to packaging of MEMS-based microsystems. Some of these processes will be used to...