Singulation of MEMS is a critical step in the transition from wafer-level to die-level devices. As is the case for capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) ring arrays, an ideal singulation must protect the fragile membranes from the processing environment while maintaining a ring array geometry. The singulation process presented in this paper involves bonding a trench-patterned CMUT wafer onto a support wafer, deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) of the trenches, separating the CMUT wafer from the support wafer and de-tethering the CMUT device from the CMUT wafer. The CMUT arrays fabricated and singulated in this process were ring-shaped arrays, with inner and outer diameters of 5 mm and 10 mm, respectively. The fabricated CMUT ring arrays demonstrate the ability of this method to successfully and safely singulate the ring arrays and is applicable to any arbitrary 2D shaped MEMS device with uspended microstructures, taking advantage of the inherent planar attributes of DRIE.
Keywords: bonding; capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT); deep reactive ion etching (DRIE); ring arrays; singulation; tether; ultrasound imaging.