Method and apparatus for direct bonding two bodies
AssigneeNippondenso Co., Ltd.
InventorsMasao Nagakubo, Seiji Fujino, Kouji Senda, Tadashi Hattori
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Bodies of at least one material are held in a contacting holder 12 in a vacuum chamber. The surfaces of the bodies are cleaned by a low energy ion etching. Water vapor from a pure water bottle is supplied through a nozzle as a water molecule beam so that water molecules and hydroxide groups are chemically adsorbed on the surfaces of the bodies. A plasma beam or microwaves are applied to the surfaces of the bodies to remove the water molecules and leave only hydroxide groups remaining on the surfaces. The holder is operated to bring the surfaces of the bodies into contact with each other, to thereby obtain direct bonding of the bodies.
Claims18
A method for direct bonding of two bodies of at least one material, said method comprising:
- a first step of preparing two bodies having surfaces which complementarily correspond to each other and which can come into intimate contact with each other and cleaning said surfaces of the bodies in a vacuum atmosphere;
- a second step of causing said cleaned surface of at least one of said bodies to chemically adsorb hydroxide groups;
- and
- a third step of bringing said surfaces of said bodies into contact with each other and bonding said bodies through hydrogen bonds between the hydroxide groups on said surface of said at least one body and oxygen atoms present on said surface of the other body.
An apparatus for direct bonding of two bodies of at least one material, comprising:
- a vacuum chamber;
- a first means for holding two bodies to be bonded while surfaces of the bodies are exposed and for, by subsequent operation, bringing said surfaces of the bodies into contact with each other in the vacuum chamber;
- a second means for causing the surfaces of the bodies to adsorb hydroxide groups in the vacuum chamber;
- and
- a third means for operating said first means to bring said surfaces of the bodies into contact with each other in the vacuum chamber.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.