RELEASE HEIGHT ADJUSTMENT OF STRESSY METAL DEVICES BY ANNEALING BEFORE AND AFTER RELEASE

• Main Authors: DE BRUYKER DIRK, KRUSOR BRENT S, FORK DAVID K, APTE RAJ B, CHUA CHRISTOPHER L, SHIH CHINNWEN, LU JENG P, HANTSCHEL THOMAS
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 19.05.2005
• Edition: 7
• Subjects: CASINGS OR CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAILS OF ELECTRIC APPARATUS; ELECTRIC TECHNIQUES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; ELECTRICITY; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; MANUFACTURE OF ASSEMBLAGES OF ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS; MEASURING; MEASURING ELECTRIC VARIABLES; MEASURING MAGNETIC VARIABLES; PHYSICS; PRINTED CIRCUITS; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER US CLASSIFICATION; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS; TESTING

Spring structures are subjected to pre-release and post-release annealing to tune their tip height to match a specified target. Post-release annealing increases tip height, and pre-release annealing decreases tip height. The amount of tuning is related to the annealing temperature and/or time. Annealing schedules are determined for a pre-fabricated cache of unreleased spring structures such that finished spring structures having a variety of target heights can be economically produced by releasing/annealing the cache according to associated annealing schedules. Selective annealing is performed using lasers and heat absorbing/reflecting materials. Localized annealing is used to generate various spring structure shapes. Both stress-engineered and strain-engineered spring structures are tuned by annealing.