Selected Applications and Processing for Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic

Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic technology has proven itself in microelectronics, microsystems (including microfluidic systems), sensors, radio frequency (RF) features, and various other non-electronic applications. We will discuss selected applications and the processing associated with those applications. We will then focus on our recent work in the area of electromagnetic isolation (EMI) shielding using full tape thickness features (FTTF) and sidewall metallization. The FTTF is very effective in applications with −150 dB isolation requirements, but presents obvious processing difficulties in full-scale fabrication. The FTTF forms a single continuous solid wall around the volume to be shielded by using sequential punching and feature-filling. Sidewall metallization provides another method for shielding. We discuss the material incompatibilities and manufacturing considerations that need to be addressed for such structures and show preliminary implementations.