Most modern bonding techniques in microsystems technologies make use of high temperatures. While this is necessary to establish strong bonding forces, it can cause significant problems. Especially when dealing with delicate microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices, high temperatures can destroy the functional structures. Furthermore, it is often required to bond different materials, which can lead to intrinsic tensions caused by differences in the material’s coefficients of thermal expansion.
Reactive bonding using integrated reactive material systems (iRMS) has gained attention throughout the last years. As an internal heat source for bonding, these systems promise a feasible way to join heterogeneous materials without applying too much thermal stress to the whole device [1]. These concepts usually comprise multiple alternating layers of reactive materials such as Al, Ti, Ni, Co, Zr, Pd or Pt which undergo a self-propagating high temperature synthesis (SHS)-reaction [2, 3].