Die attach is a typical process that induces thermal stress in the fabrication of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices. One solution to this problem is attaching a portion of the die to the package. In such partial die bonding, the lack of control over the spreading of the adhesive can cause non-uniform attachment. In this case, asymmetric packaging stress could be generated and transferred to the die. The performance of MEMS devices, which employ the differential outputs of the sensing elements, is directly affected by the asymmetric packaging stress. In this paper, we proposed a die-attach structure with a pillar to reduce the asymmetric packaging stress and the changes in packaging stress due to changes in the device temperature. To verify the proposed structure, we fabricated four types of differential resonant accelerometers (DRA) with the silicon-on-glass process. We confirmed experimentally that the pillar can control the spreading of the adhesive and that the asymmetric packaging stress is considerably reduced. The simulation and experimental results indicated that the DRAs manufactured using glass-on-silicon wafers as handle substrates instead of conventional glass wafers have a structure that compensates for the thermal stress.
Keywords: asymmetric packaging stress; die attach; differential resonant accelerometer (DRA); glass-on-silicon wafer; microelectromechanical system (MEMS); silicon-on-glass process; thermal stress.