Plated copper on ceramic manufacturing technology advances into RF and CSP assembly systems

A copper on ceramic plating technology which offers good versatility in a wide range of applications is being recognized for its robustness and cost effective ease of use. It is a wet process that follows precision laser hole drilling, that produces robust copper-plated-through and filled micro-vias. Design and manufacturing equipment and methods used to produce these substrates are described. In high frequency applications, the characteristics that provide the performance gains are described. Several resonator test structures used to validate the performance are described. Other useful active and passive components demonstrating high frequency performance are illustrated. Enhanced thermal capability with heat-spreading copper and filled copper vias is illustrated using simple equations and calculations. Roadmaps of packaging trends in RF circuitry illustrating trends in structures using conductor on ceramic technology moving away from screen printed thick film conductors and photo-defined/etched back thick film materials to this "photo-formed" technology are described. The extra precision on rigid CTE matched ceramic, the RF requirements and cost-effectiveness of the technology is leading the packaging efforts of system designers from wire bonding to flip-chip assembly structures. The movement from packaged CBGAs and CSPs to flip-chip die in RF modules is described.