Effectiveness of $p +$ Layer in Mitigating Substrate Noise Induced by Through-Silicon Via for Microwave Applications

We characterize quantitatively the noise-shielding effect of the p+ layer surrounding through-silicon via (TSV). In time domain, as for the rise time of input signal in picosecond scale, 1) the peak noise induced by TSV with p+ layer at the observe point (OP) is reduced by more than 91.8% compared with that of conventional TSV; 2) for the case without p+ layer, the threshold voltage and saturation current of nMOSFET are changed by as much as 80 mV and 120% due to the TSV-induced noise, respectively; while for the case with p+ layer, there are hardly any disturbance. In frequency domain, the transmission parameter from TSV to OP is decreased by 21~43 dB in the frequency range of 0.1 to 50 GHz, after the p+ layer is added. It is proved that the p+ layer can mitigate the TSV-induced substrate noise effectively for microwave applications.