The German Initiative to Commercialize the LIGA Technology– A LIGA fabrication line at ANKA

摘要

In the early 1990's, deep x-ray LIGA technology was a pacemaking technology for therngrowth of MEMS in that it demonstrated not only its own potential for various classes ofrnsensors and actuators, but also for microsystems in general. Since LIGA not onlyrnincorporates a single process step but a fairly long process sequence as well asrnsynchrotron as the radiation source, its adoption into industry is still rather weak.rnNevertheless, the LIGA technique's qualities are still unique with respect to both thernverticality of the sidewalls and their extremely low roughness and they are called for inrnspecific niche markets.rnOver the past years, we have addressed LIGAs barriers to market penetration byrnconsistently and continuously focussing on making the technology repeatable and reliablernthroughout all process steps including the fabrication of the x-ray masks.rnThis paper demonstrates the status and the prospect of the LIGA-technology with respectrnto both technological reliability and market issues such as throughput and cost.