Impedance standard substrate fabricated by screen printing technology

Abstract

The paper proposes new fabrication process for an Impedance Standard Substrate (ISS) for on-wafer measurements at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies. Screen printing technology has provided coplanar waveguides (CPW) lines with low transmission loss and high precision contact repeatability at millimeter-wave frequency up to 110 GHz. The paper demonstrate capability of the screen printed CPW as an ISS for on-wafer measurements. Standard lines with seven different lengths were designed and fabricated by screen printing technology. In the paper, Multiline ThruReflect-Line (TRL) calibration was performed by using ISSs fabricated by both screen printing and conventional pleated technologies. Regarding calibration capability validation, contact repeatability performance was first tested, then, verification devices were measured. According to comparison results, results obtained by calibration of screen printing ISS are almost the same as results measured based on conventional ISS tech.