mm-wave applications present a lot of challenges for packaging. Besides the ongoing demands in miniaturization and low cost also topics as overall thermal concept, heterogeneous integration of different RF components, antenna and passive integration, signal integrity or shielding have to be addressed.
The presentation will give an overview on different packaging approaches from wire bonding to flip chip joining and embedding. Embedding of active and passive components into printed circuit boards and fan-out wafer level packaging (FOWLP) are here the latest trends. Especially FOWLP offers a lot of opportunities due to substrate-less packaging, low thermal resistance, high performance due to shortest interconnects together with direct IC connection by thin film metallization and lower parasitic effects.
In addition to the technology introduction a review on packaging materials for mm-wave packaging is given.