Development and Characterization of Non-Evaporable Getter Thin Films with Ru Seeding Layer for MEMS Applications

Mastering non-evaporable getter (NEG) thin films by elucidating their activation mechanisms and predicting their sorption performances will contribute to facilitating their integration into micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). For this aim, thin film based getters structured in single and multi-metallic layered configurations deposited on silicon substrates such as Ti/Si, Ti/Ru/Si, and Zr/Ti/Ru/Si were investigated. Multilayered NEGs with an inserted Ru seed sub-layer exhibited a lower temperature in priming the activation process and a higher sorption performance compared to the unseeded single Ti/Si NEG. To reveal the gettering processes and mechanisms in the investigated getter structures, thermal activation effect on the getter surface chemical state change was analyzed with in-situ temperature XPS measurements, getter sorption behavior was measured by static pressure method, and getter dynamic sorption performance characteristics was measured by standard conductance (ASTM F798–97) method. The correlation between these measurements allowed elucidating residual gas trapping mechanism and prediction of sorption efficiency based on the getter surface poisoning. The gettering properties were found to be directly dependent on the different changes of the getter surface chemical state generated by the activation process. Thus, it was demonstrated that the improved sorption properties, obtained with Ru sub-layer based multi-layered NEGs, were related to a gettering process mechanism controlled simultaneously by gas adsorption and diffusion effects, contrarily to the single layer Ti/Si NEG structure in which the gettering behavior was controlled sequentially by surface gas adsorption until reaching saturation followed then by bulk diffusion controlled gas sorption process.