Hello, everyone, Thank you all for your attention and advices. The islands problem has been solved in my su-8 experiments. As for my case, the islands are caused by bubble burst. I used needle to pierce the bubbles in su-8 layer before soft-bake, and this may introduce stress into the layer. Also, the needle may bring some particles into su-8. So far, the islands have gone. 2008/7/9 Oakes Garrett: > I believe that you are in fact encountering the situation that Norbert has > described below. We typically use several hot plate ovens to process SU-8 > wafers on our automated systems. In this manner each hot plate is vented > after a few minutes of bake time. This prevents excess solvent from > building up inside the hot plate oven and potentially condensing and > dripping. > > Each of our hotplates have greater than 5 cm of clearance to the lid and > are greater than 200 mm in diameter. > > I hope this helps. > > - Garrett > > EV Group > invent * innovate * implement > Applications Engineer - Direct: +1 (480) 305 2443, > Main: +1 (480) 305 2400 Fax: +1 (480) 305 2401 > Cell: +1 (480) 516 6724 > E-Mail: G.Oakes@EVGroup.com, > Web: www.EVGroup.com > > -----Original Message----- > From: 郑瑞麟(Ruilin Zheng) [mailto:zhengruilin@gmail.com] > Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 5:57 PM > To: General MEMS discussion > Subject: Re: [mems-talk] Islands found during SU-8 soft-bake > > Hello, everyone > > the hot plate is of about 20cm in diameter, with a metal lid on top, and > the > lid roof is about 3cm from the hot plate. > Do you think it is too close for the lid to hot plate? > > > On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 5:13 PM, Nodes Norbert wrote: > > > There could be also a different reason for these islands. > > What does the bake module look like? > > Is the volume between wafer and bake module cover very low? > > It can happen that the solvent condenses inside the bake module at cold > > spots and create droplets. Then, these solvent droplets can drip down on > the > > wafer and cause the islands. > > It seems the bake module can handle the solvent fume volume with 2" > wafers. > > But with 4" wafers, there is too much of it. > > > > First approach to solve this increasing the bake module's exhaust rate. > > > > Best regards, > > Norbert Nodes > _______________________________________________ > Hosted by the MEMS and Nanotechnology Exchange, the country's leading > provider of MEMS and Nanotechnology design and fabrication services. > Visit us at http://www.mems-exchange.org > > Want to advertise to this community? See http://www.memsnet.org > > To unsubscribe: > http://mail.mems-exchange.org/mailman/listinfo/mems-talk > -- Best Regards, 郑瑞麟 Ruilin Zheng Address: Pen-Tung Sah MEMS Research Center, Xiamen University, Xiamen,361005, P.R.China