Design and fabrication of thin film resistive heaters for hybrid optoelectronic packaging

This paper presents the technology for the design and fabrication of planar resistive heaters made from vacuum deposited nichrome thin films on a quartz substrate. These heaters are suitable as isolated local heat sources for melting solder to attach discrete components on a hybrid optoelectronic integration platform. Numerical simulations are performed using the Finite Element Method (FEM) to determine the geometry of the heaters in order to deliver adequate thermal performance. Multiple heater elements are batch processed on a 3.0 in polished fused quartz wafer using standard photolithographic techniques. Use of polyimide as a reliable insulation layer between the nichrome thin film and the solder has improved the thermal uniformity over the heater surface. Individual heaters can reach temperatures close to 300°C drawing 7.1 W of power on an uncooled alumina platform and 12.0 W on an uncooled copper platform. This temperature is high enough to melt gold-tin (AuSn) solder (with eutectic melting point of 280°C), typically used for attaching different optoelectronic components on a substrate.