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358 IDT MICROSENSOR FABRICATION
for postdeposition cleaning. Once the 15 minute postdeposition cleaning is completed,
the plasma is extinguished, the gases are turned off, and the chamber is evacuated for
3 minutes. Finally, a robotic transporter can shuttle the SAW-IDT wafers to the load-lock
chamber (unit 3), where they are subsequently removed.
12.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS
This chapter has described in detail two process runs that can be followed to fabricate a
Rayleigh wave IDT microsensor or a Love wave IDT microsensor (Gangadharan 1999).
The main steps for the etching process are given in Table 12.2 and for the lift-off
process in Table 12.3. These tables provide the reader with a list of the key steps of the
two processes described in Section 12.2.4 earlier.
A summary of the main advantages and disadvantages of the etching and lift-off
processes is given in Table 12.4. They are relevant to the fabrication of SAW-IDT
microsensors and are taken from a number of sources (Campbell 1996, 1998; Atashbar
1999).
The next chapter describes the use of SAW-IDT devices in a number of different
sensing applications.
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