Hello,

I have an application where I have deposited a very thick film of metal on
the front side of my silicon wafer and then wish to process it through a
number of additional steps near the end of the process flow, but the problem
is that the sheet-deposited film stress is so huge that it induces over
200-microns of wafer bow, compressive.  With so much bow on the wafer, none
of my process tools want to pick the wafer up during the proceeding steps.

My question is, is there some method of performing a backside process to
cause the film/wafer combination to relax somewhat to a lower wafer bow, to
better allow for vacuum-arm wafer pickup?  I think annealing is not an
option due to the nature of the metal film; it will only become more
compressive at the temperatures I could anneal.


Thanks for any thoughts,
- Justin

Justin C. Borski
MEMS Program Manager
Advanced MicroSensors Inc.
[email protected]
www.advancedmicrosensors.com