Metal-Transfer-Micromolded RF Components for System-On-Package (SOP)

Abstract

This paper reports a metal-transfer-micromolding (MTM) technique for simultaneous implementation of metallized high aspect ratio molded polymer RF passive components, as well as an organic RF circuit board, in a high performance and cost-effective fashion. A system on package (SOP) integration scheme of air lifted RF components can be realized by this process. Two test vehicles have been utilized to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed process: planar coplanar waveguide (CPW)-based band stop filters and an airlifted monopole antenna array, both operating in Ka-band. The measured filter characteristic shows a loss of less than 2.5 dB in passband and 20dB in stopband, which agrees well with HFSS10.0 simulations. The monopole antennas show good radiation performance and the 1OdB bandwidths at the resonant radiation frequencies are as large as 21.5% for the tested structures.

A micromachined airflow sensor based on RF evanescent-mode cavity resonator

“…The simplicity of the feeding structures enables easy integration of the sensing elements. Metal-transfer molding (MTM) process-based MEMS technology is adopted for the realization of the cavity structures to achieve a low-cost batch fabrication [11][12]. The sensing element is fabricated separately and integrated with the cavity resonator by a simple fixture method.…”

“…The master for molding is made by stereolithography (SLA) and can be repetitively used for continuous molding processes. An MTM process is utilized to form the metalized 3-D structures as well as the CPW feeding lines [11]. Fig.…”