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Flip-Chip Fabrication of Advanced MEMS Using a Novel Latching Off-Chip Hinge Mechanism


 This paper presents the design, fabrication and implementation of a novel off-chip hinge mechanism that can be latched in place to hold surface-micromachined structures off the edge of the chip. This mechanism was designed to enable fast, reliable, accurate, simple, and low-cost fabrication of advanced flip-chip MEMS structures. The upper layers of a flip-chip device can be commercially prefabricated on a host module attached to the hinge mechanism while the lower layers can be prefabricated on virtually any desired receiving module. This paper presents the design, fabrication and testing of a variety of advanced micromirror arrays assembled using this mechanism. This research demonstrates that structures comprised of several surface-micromachined layers can be positioned and bonded onto a variety of work surfaces such as ceramic substrates, MEMS chips and even CMOS electronics using adhesives, solder, gold bonding or mechanical latches. The hinge mechanism is designed to be easily disabled by a variety of methods should another bonding technique be desired. All flip-chip modules are designed with the mechanism to enable multiple flip-chip assembly options.