A new approach to vacuum packaging of getter-less and gettered ceramic chip carriers

This paper reports on a new system and approach to vacuum packaging of MEMS sensors with vacuum pressures on the order of tens of milliTorr and below with and without getters. Until now, commercial vacuum packaging equipment has limited bake-out temperatures due to the upside-down approach where the sensor and ceramic chip carrier (LCC) is inverted on a non-heated stage and thermally isolated by a small gap and shutter. The approach reported in this article has demonstrated 20 milliTorr vacuum packaging pressures repeatedly measured for getter-less packaging and the first run of gettered packages have vacuum levels less than 6 milliTorr.