Activities of the G-device Project
Since April of last year, the G-device Center of the BEANS

cleaning to lithography, oxidation, diffusion, deposition, andLaboratory, sponsored by the New Energy and Industrialetching. The back-end line installed in the smart clean room isTechnology Development Organization (NEDO), has beenequipped to handle chip/wafer-to-wafer bonding and wiring asworking toward the development of an advanced sensor

well as evaluations of the processed wafer profiles and thenetwork system and environmentally friendly processes. Inelectrical properties of devices, for example.
These production lines support microfabrication at a line

December of last year, the Center completed installation of asmart clean room and front/back-end advanced 8-inch MEMS

width of 0.35 µm, as well as three-dimensional micromachining,lines (TKB812-F/B) at the Research Center for Ubiquitous

enabling us to produce everything from sensors and other time-

MEMS and Microengineering, housed in the research base,tested MEMS devices to advanced devices. In our NEDO-

Tsukuba East of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial

sponsored R&D work, the MEMS lines will be used in the trial

Science and Technology (AIST Tsukuba East).

production and evaluation of test element groups (TEGs) used

2The smart clean room (area: 150 m ) is designed for low-for verifying processes developed in the BEANS Project, andTEGs of sensor network elements.

power consumption and low environmental impact. The clean
room is targeted to achieve clean-on-demand control using a

Our goal is to bridge the “commercialization gap” by using

sensor network system to monitor temperature, humidity,

these facilities to provide development support in MEMS

particles, power consumption, and other environmental

prototyping and pilot production aimed at mass production,conditions, and a dedicated smart air conditioning system.

which areas have been considered a weakness in Japan to date.

The MEMS lines form a coherent fabrication line that

At Tsukuba’s R&D center for NMEMS (TIA-NMEMS), these

supports 8-inch and 12-inch wafers and includes a front-end

facilities are also expected to serve as the core of an R&D

processing line (TKB812-F) and a back-end processing andplatform for operations of the future Micro/Nano Openevalutation line (TKB812-B). The front-end line installed in a

Innovation Center (MNOIC).

2clean room at AIST (area: 350 m ) covers everything from wafer

Overview of the advanced 8-inch MEMS line
Advanced 8-inch MEMS line
(for 8-inch MEMS and 12-inch semiconductors)

Installation site

Process
Cleaning/drying
Lithography

AIST
Main gate

Process and evaluation equipment
12" wafer cleaning system (RCA cleaning)
Organic draft chamber, IPA vapor dryer, water purifier
12" DMD maskless exposure system, mask aligner, i-line stepper
12" coater/developer, 12" oxygen plasma asher
Oxidation furnace, boron diffusion furnace, 12" low-temperature TEOS plasma-enhanced CVD system for forming silicon dioxide films

Tsukuba
East

Front-endclean room(TKB 812-F)

Deposition

Silicon nitride LPCVD furnace
Phosphorus-doped polysilicon LPCVD furnace
3-chamber sputtering system for depositing metal, piezoelectric (AlN), and insulating layers
12"/8" silicon DRIE system

Etching

ICP dry etcher for metal, ICP dry etchers for silicon dioxide/nitride films
Silicon anisotropic wet etcher
Dry sacrificial layer etcher
Chip-to-wafer (12") bonding system, wafer-to-wafer surface-activated bonding system

JIS Center

Bonding/packaging 12" electron beam evaporator, vacuum annealing furnace
Back-end
clean room
(TKB 812-B)

Laser stealth dicer, 12" blade dicer
Wafer prober, noncontact-type film stress measurement system, 12" X-ray CT scanning system

Evaluation

Major equipment in the MEMS line

12" SEM (elemental analysis, crystallographic analysis), CD-SEM
12" spectroscopic ellipsometer, contact-type surface profiler, optical microscope, wafer surface particle analyzer

i-line stepper

TEOS-CVD system

Silicon DRIE system

Dry sacrificial layer etcher

Wafer-to-wafer bonding system

3D X-ray CT scanning system

8-inch8/12-inch

8/12-inch

8-inch8-inch8/12-inch

7