Reverse Lift-Off Process and Application for Cu-Zr-Ti Metallic Glass Thick Film Structures

Abstract

In technologies involving micro electromechanical systems, lift-off processes combined with sputter deposition are general patterning methods for the formation of amorphous alloy thick film structures. However, the thicknesses of structures fabricated in this manner are not uniform because sputtered particles are blocked by the sidewalls of the lift-off layer. In this paper, a reverse lift-off process is proposed as a new patterning method for fabricating amorphous alloy thick film structures of uniform thickness. In the reverse lift-off process, a template of the desired structure is formed on top of the chosen substrate. The thick film structure is then formed by sputter deposition on the top surface of the template. In contrast to a conventional lift-off process, here the thickness of the structure is uniform because there is nothing to hinder the sputtered particles. To demonstrate this process, we successfully fabricated a Cu-Zr-Ti metallic glass thick film structure with a uniform film thickness and a rectangular cross section across different target structure widths and thicknesses. This demonstrates that the reverse lift-off process is more suitable than conventional lift-off processes for the fabrication of metallic glass thick film structures.