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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.


  REFERENCES

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    sensors based  on nanosized  TiO 2  thin film, PhD Thesis,  RMIT,  Australia.
  Ballantine,  D.  S. et al. (1997). Acoustic  Wave Sensors: Theory,  Design and Physico-Chemical Appli-
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