Through Glass Via (TGV) Technology for RF Applications

Over the past several years there have been substantial advancements in through glass via (TGV) technology. There is an excellent opportunity to leverage TGV technology and the insulating properties of glass, to address next generation needs for RF components. Multi-bands multi-standards with carrier aggregation, WiFi/GPS coexistence, and LTE-U make RF front end more and more complicated. In order to address the best-fit filtering solutions to RF front end, high-performance inductors and capacitors are required. For inductors, drastic performance (size and Q) improvement have been demonstrated by technology evolutions from 2D planar inductors on glass to 3D solenoid using TGV, achieving inductor Q>80 (for 3nH @ 1 GHz). On top of the TGV inductors, we have successfully integrated Cu MIM (metal-insulator-metal) capacitors by using 15um thick Cu plates, resulting in Q>560 (10pF @ 2 GHz).