On-wafer inductance and resistance characterization of sub-5pH deep silicon via (DSV)

A low parasitic inductance ground for SiGe power amplifiers has been realized using a deep silicon via (DSV). The inductance of the DSV is approximately one order of magnitude smaller than the thru-wafer-via (TWV) inductance of ~21 pH enabling a ground path for power amplifiers in common emitter configuration with literally no parasitic inductance. In this paper we compare two on-wafer measurement approaches, a single port and a two port shunt resonator test structure to characterize such a small inductance. The resistive component in the DSV is dominating and required careful consideration in the two approaches to yield accurate characterization results.