Evaluation of polymer-metal-hybrid bonded wafer-stacks and sensor wafers for ultra-thin hybrid silicon detectors

TL;DR

This paper evaluates a novel wafer-to-wafer bonding process using polymer underfill for hybrid silicon detectors, enabling ultra-thin, mechanically stable, high-yield interconnections suitable for high-energy physics and medical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a polymer-based wafer-to-wafer bonding technique that enhances mechanical stability and allows for ultra-thin hybrid silicon detectors, with demonstrated high bump bonding yield.

Findings

Successful wafer-to-wafer bonding with high yield

Fabrication of hybrid detectors with Timepix3 chips

Potential for ultra-thin, mechanically stable detectors

Abstract

Semiconductor pixel detectors are widely established in High Energy Physics (HEP) and Medical physics for their high spatial resolution and tracking capabilities. Research on both monolithic detectors and hybrid detectors is ongoing. Monolithic detectors, which integrate the sensor and the read-out electronics in the same die, provide the benefit of reduced thickness but the needed intricate imaging process is only offered by a limited number of chip vendors. The hybrid approach instead facilitates the design and fabrication of sensor and read-out chip using different technologies and opens up access to a large market of semiconductor vendors. For the production of silicon pixel detectors, the interconnection between sensor and read-out chip is usually realized on an individual die level. The needed mechanical stability during the handling of the dies limits their possible thinness. The wafer-to-wafer interconnection process being developed in this project uses a polymer underfill layer between the wafers to provide additional mechanical stability. This allows one to thin the wafer stack significantly after interconnection, bringing the total thickness close to that of monolithic detectors. In this paper, we present first results on the bump bonding yield of the process based on daisy-chain wafer measurements. For the first hybrid pixel detectors produced with this technique, a dedicated sensor wafer was designed and fabricated to be bonded to Timepix3 read-out chip wafers. Results of the characterization of the sensor wafer before hybridization are presented. We show that the wafer-to-wafer bonding process is suitable for hybrid semiconductor pixel detectors.