Development of Multilayer Organic Modules for Hermetic Packaging of RF MEMS Circuits

We present the design and development of a multilayer organic module that can integrate microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) into a system-in-a-package (SiP). A cavity formed in liquid crystal polymer (LCP) has been laminated, at low temperature, onto a MEMS silicon switch to create a hermetically sealed package. Multilayer organic dielectrics can be integrated on top of LCP films to form a 3D SiP module. The entire SiP hermetically sealed package has a total insertion loss of ~0.1 dB at X-band. The package also passes Method 1014, MIL-STD-883 gross leak and fine leak hermeticity tests. We have demonstrated a 2-bit RF MEMS TTD (true-time delay) switched line phase shifter in this multilayer organic module. The phase shifter achieves an average insertion loss of 1.8 dB/bit, with less than 3deg phase shift variation