Comparison of Additive Manufacturing Methods for the Attachment of Bare Die to Printed Circuit Boards

This paper presents two different methods for the additive/subtractive hybrid integration of bare die with conventional Printed Circuit Boards (PCB’s). Differences in fabrication, electrical performance, and sizing are discussed. One method involves attachment to a pocket milled into the dielectric of a copper laminate. Filet bridges between the chip and board are applied using a house-made photocurable dielectric ink, and aerosol-jet silver conductors are printed overtop. The second method is similar, but the die is instead attached to a copper ground plane on top of the laminate. Electrical measurements are taken using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). The experiment is shown here with a 0dB attenuator die, and results using a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) die will also be presented.