High frequency electrical characterization of electronic packaging materials: environmental and process considerations

Recognizing the need for improved materials data to meet the needs of designers of RF and microwave products, DuPont Photopolymers and Electronic Materials (P&EM) has had an ongoing program to generate high frequency data on materials properties (dielectric constant, loss tangent and attenuation). Characterization of ceramic and printed wiring advanced interconnection materials in the 1 to 20 GHz range has been performed for a variety of new Thick Film and Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic (LTCC) dielectrics. Gold and silver conductors applied by both screen printing and photopatterning on these dielectrics as well as on 96% alumina have been tested. These have been benchmarked against Thin Film conductors and copper clad FR-4, Polyimide, BT and Teflon^(R) printed wiring materials. The performance of many of these systems has been reported for room temperature and humidity conditions. This presentation builds on the previous work with data on the high frequency properties of some of the advanced ceramic and printed wiring materials systems when exposed to 85°C temperature and 85% relative humidity. In addition the high frequency performance of a new gold conductor system with both screen printed and photoetched patterning on 96% and 99% Alumina is described demonstrating the improved performance over gold Thin Film metallization typically used in Microwave applications