Hermetic Housings Incorporating Multiple 50 Ohm Feedthroughs

IC packaging technology has not kept the explosive pace of IC electronics technology. The costs associated with inadequate packaging and interconnect technology can be measured both in dollars and in the ability to exploit existing technology. Holz will develop a large scale hermetic housing with multiple 50 ohm feedthroughs to provide a single assembly for several K-band microwave components. The assembly will be constructed using StratEdge technology, a thick/thin film process for fabricating the hermetic multilayer transmission line interface to support frequencies over 20 GHz. Multilayer substrates constructed with StratEdge technology have shown excellent electrical and thermal characteristics at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies. Initial efforts will concentrate on building an independent 50 ohm feedthrough for direct stripline/antenna interface for an MMIC transceiver module.