Anodic bonding of glass and silicon wafers with an intermediate silicon nitride film and its application to batch fabrication of SPM tip arrays

This paper reports a detailed study of wafer-level anodic bonding with a dielectric intermediate layer and its application to the fabrication of scanning probe microscope (SPM) probe arrays. First, the bonding performance between sodium-ion rich glass and silicon nitride coated silicon substrate is characterized. The effects of voltage, tool pressure, bonding time, surface properties, and cleanliness are thoroughly studied. Then, the silicon nitride based SPM probe arrays consisted of pyramidal tip and 1.5 μm-thickness cantilever are successful bonded and transferred to Pyrex 7740 glass substrate by use of our optimized wafer-scale electrostatic force bonding condition. The nano-imaging capability of the scanning probe array is also demonstrated.