3-D Thin Film Interposer Based on TGV (Through Glass Vias): An Alternative to Si-Interposer

Interposers for SiP will become more and more important for advanced electronic systems. But through substrate vias are essential for the 3-D integration. Being a standard for laminate based materials this is much more complex for Si-wafers: High speed etching has to be combined with complex electrical isolation, diffusion barriers and void-free Cu-filling. Without doubt this can be solved in lab-scale but for high production scale cost is a tremendous barrier. Glass wafers with W-plugs have been intensively investigated in this paper. A new acronym has been posted to high-light this technology: TGV for Through Glass Vias. The results of modeling and simulation of TGV at RF/Microwave frequencies showed a very good compromise between wafer thickness, TGV-shape and via diameter for vertical metal plugs with 100 mu m diameters in 500 mu m thick glass wafer still very stable for thin film wafer processing without costly temporary wafer bonding processes. Therefore the HermeS (R) from Schott was chosen as the basis for a prototype of a bidirectional 4 x 10 Gbps electro-optical transceiver module. Thin film RDL and bumping of these wafers was possible without any modifications to Si-wafer. First thermal cycles showed very promising results for the reliability of this concept.