A W-Band Chip-to-Printed Circuit Board Interconnect

An alternative to wire-bonding and flip-chip interconnects of integrated circuits and printed circuit boards (PCB) is presented. The flip-line interconnect combines the advantages of wire-bonding and flip-chip technology while avoiding their disadvantages. It is especially useful for prototype setups where device inspection and repairability are crucial. The proposed structure is analyzed using full-wave simulation software. It is shown, that in contrast to wire-bonding, the transition length is not critical. A transition from a CMOS chip with a pad pitch of 100 µm to a regular PCB is manufactured. Measurements at W-band (75–110 GHz) reveal a return loss better than 12 dB and transmission above -3.4 dB.