Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of Ultrathin 3-D Glass Interposers With Through-Package-Vias at Same Pitch as TSVs in Silicon

TLDR

3‑D IC stacking for high bandwidth suffers from TSV requirements, thermal challenges, and high manufacturing costs. The study develops, fabricates, and characterizes an ultrathin 3‑D glass interposer with TPVs matching TSV pitch, addressing defect‑free hole formation and copper metallization. The authors fabricate 30‑μm thin glass interposers with 15–40 μm TPVs at 27‑μm pitch, using defect‑free etching and copper metallization, and perform electrical characterization. The ultrathin glass interposer demonstrates ultrasmall TPVs matching TSV dimensions, with insertion loss <0.15 dB at 20 GHz and superior crosstalk performance, indicating a simpler high‑bandwidth alternative to TSV‑based 3‑D IC stacking.

Abstract

A double-sided and ultrathin 3-D glass interposer with through package vias (TPVs) at same pitch as through silicon vias (TSVs) in silicon interposers is developed to provide a compelling alternative to 3-D IC stacking of logic and memory devices with TSVs. The 3-D IC stacking approach to achieve high bandwidth has several drawbacks, including the need for TSVs through the logic die, thermal management within the 3-D stack, and the high manufacturing cost associated with wafer-based TSV processing. This paper presents design, fabrication, and electrical characterization of small TPVs (15-40 μm in diameter) in 30-μm thin glass to achieve an ultrathin 3-D interposer. This paper also reports the first demonstration of ultrasmall TPVs in glass (15 μm) with same dimensions as TSVs in silicon. The signal insertion loss and crosstalk behavior of TPVs in ultrathin glass were investigated and found to be superior to TSVs using 3-D electromagnetic simulations. In demonstrating the 3-D interposers, two process-related challenges were addressed in this paper, namely: 1) defect-free formation of ultrasmall TPV holes with diameters of 15 μm at 27-μm pitch and 2) TPV metallization with copper. The fabricated TPVs in ultrathin glass showed a good model to hardware correlation of signal transmission with insertion loss <;0.15 dB at 20 GHz. The results in this paper suggest that the 3-D interposer concept can be a simpler alternative to 3-D IC stacking with TSVs to achieve high bandwidth between the logic and memory devices.