SU-8 cantilever chip interconnection

The polymer SU-8 is becoming widely used for all kinds of micromechanical and microfluidic devices, not only as a photoresist but also as the constitutional material of the devices. Many of these polymeric devices need to include a microfluidic system as well as electrical connection from the electrodes on the SU-8 chip to a printed circuit board. Here, we present two different methods of electrically connecting an SU-8 chip, which contains a microfluidic network and free-hanging mechanical parts. The tested electrical interconnection techniques are flip chip bonding using underfill or flip chip bonding using an anisotropic conductive film (ACF). These are both widely used in the Si industry and might also be used for the large scale interconnection of SU-8 chips. The SU-8 chip, to which the interconnections are made, has a microfluidic channel with integrated micrometer-sized cantilevers that can be used for label-free biochemical detection. All the bonding tests are compared with results obtained using similar Si chips. It is found that it is significantly more complicated to interconnect SU-8 than Si cantilever chips primarily due to the softness of SU-8.