WMG: LIQUID CRYSTAL POLYMERS FOR MICROWAVE AND MILLIMETER WAVE PACKAGING  

Date & Time: Monday, June 13; 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Location: Hyatt Regency B

Topics & Speakers: 

• RF and Millimeter Wave Multi-layer LCP Modules and MEMS Packaging, Anh-Vu Pham, University of California Davis

• Moisture Resistant Air Cavity LCP-Plastic Microwave Power Packages, J. W. Roman, RJR Polymers, Inc

• Recent advances in LCP based 3D RF and mmW front-end, S. Pinel and J. Papapolymerou, Georgia Institute of Technology

• 15 Years In and Out of Liquid Crystalline Polyester Films, D. Haas, Sanmina-SCI

• Microfabrication Techniques for Liquid Crystal Polymer Substrates,  B. Farrell, Foster Miller

Organizers:

A-V Pham, University of California, Davis

G. Ponchak, NASA Glenn Research Center

J. Laskar, Georgia Institute of Technology  

Sponsor:

MTT-12: Microwave and Millimeter Wave Packaging  

Liquid Crystal Polymer (LCP) has recently received much attention as a high frequency circuit substrate and package material.  The advantages of LCP compared to other organics substrate materials are low moisture absorption, low coefficient of hydroscopic expansion (CHE), excellent barrier properties, and adjustable coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) through thermal treatment process.  Passive circuits on LCP substrates have been demonstrated to have low loss and high performance in the microwave and millimeter wave regime.   LCP is a serious substrate candidate for next generation microwave/millimeter wave multi-chip-module (MCM), systems-on-package (SOP) and advanced packaging technology.  Furthermore, LCP has recently been used to develop low-cost microwave/millimeter wave hermetic shield air-cavity packages for electronics, optoelectronics, and MEMS.

In this half-day workshop, the participants will obtain: an overview of LCP material properties, fabrication processes and design guidelines of multi-layer LCP substrates, fundamental limitations of multi-layer LCP substrates, demonstration of microwave and millimeter circuits and modules on using LCP substrates, and hermetic shield air cavity packages using molded-LCP.