Development of an Indium bump bond process for silicon pixel detectors at PSI

The hybrid pixel detectors used in the high-energy physics experiments currently under construction use a vertical connection technique, the so-called bump bonding. As the pitch below 100 μm, required in these applications, cannot be fulfilled with standard industrial processes (e.g. the IBM C4 process), an in-house bump bond process using reflowed indium bumps was developed at PSI as part of the R&D for the CMS-pixel detector. The bump deposition on the sensor is performed in two subsequent lift-off steps. As the first photolithographic step a thin under bump metalization (UBM) is sputtered onto bump pads. It is wettable by indium and defines the diameter of the bump. The indium is evaporated via a second photolithographic step with larger openings and is reflowed afterwards. The height of the balls is defined by the volume of the indium. On the readout chip only one photolithographic step is carried out to deposit the UBM and a thin indium layer for better adhesion. After mating both parts a second reflow is performed for self-alignment and obtaining high mechanical strength. For the placement of the chips a manual and an automatic machine were constructed. The former is very flexible in handling different chip and module geometries but has a limited throughput while the latter features a much higher grade of automatization and is therefore much more suited for producing hundreds of modules with a well-defined geometry. The reliability of this process was proven by the successful construction of the PILATUS detector. The construction of PILATUS 6M (60 modules) and the CMS pixel barrel (roughly 800 modules) has started in early 2006.