Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic (LTCC)

Spectrum Control's LTCC is an alternative glass-ceramic multilayer substrate medium that incorporates conventional thick-film-material metal systems, providing a rugged, cost competitive substrate that can incorporate embedded passive components, along with more advanced devices such as flipchips and wire bonded bare die.

Cavities can be configured in an LTCC substrate to provide controlled-impedance wire bond connections and high-reliability packaging solutions.

Contact us today for implementation guidance for selecting the appropriate substrate and component technology for your unique project requirements.

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Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic Overview

Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic (LTCC)

Multi-layer high performance substrates

LTCC technology is extremely useful in a diverse range of applications, including high-volume automotive systems. It is becoming the technology of choice for high-frequency RF and microwave applications in the wireless and radar industries.

Passive components can be buried between the LTCC tape layers, minimizing the length of interconnects, improving integration and robustness, and further reducing circuit geometry. This capability is supported by continual substantial investment in fully automated production facilities to maintain the consistent levels of quality demanded by our customer's high reliability requirements.

Substrates manufactured using the cofired technique can be processed using the same methods as standard alumina substrates. Once they have been fired, laser trimmed and singulated they can be populated using standard surface mount and advanced

Overview

High performance electronic packaging and substrate technology
Ideally suited to RF and microwave products
Low loss glass-ceramic dielectric
High temperature, harsh environment suitability
Hermetic
Matched impedance routing
Strip line and microstrip transmission lines
Co-axial via structures
Embedded and surface printed resistors
Temperature coefficient of expansion matched to semiconductors

Suitability

Harsh environments
High mechanical stress
Extreme temperatures
Severe humidity

Highlights

Range of LTCC dielectric tape and conductor/resistor materials from leading suppliers/manufacturers – DuPont, Ferro and Hereaus.
Specialist Substrates Tapes: range of dielectric materials providing low cost high performance and low loss characteristics.
Silver, Gold, Platinum, Palladium Silver and Platinum Silver conductors.
Infinite range of values with sheet resistivities from 10 Ohms - 100K Ohms on the surface or embedded in the structure.
Vias can be stacked, staggered, buried, or blind. Hermeticity is achieve with a dielectric barrier.

Optimised Electronic Packaging

Guidance on Appropriate Substrate and Component Technology Implementation

APITech's offers a complete engineering, design, qualification and manufacturing service for modules and subsystems. Interconnect and assembly design is performed on advanced CAD/CAE workstations by experienced electronics engineers. Full electronic simulation is performed on analogue, digital , RF and Microwave and mixed mode circuits.

APITech's has demonstrated capability up to 60GHz and power management of tens of watts of power with LTCC based technology and provides guidance on implementation of the most appropriate substrate and component technologies.

Overview

Electromagnetic design and simulation
Thermal simulation and design
Analogue and digital simulation and design
Thermal imaging analysis

Highlights

Integrating passive elements where appropriate
Optimum selection of bare die or packaged components
Utilising cavities for active and passive devices
Using thermal vias for power management
Application of different tape materials and layer thicknesses
Implementing distributed circuit elements (microstrips, striplines, stubs etc)
Integrating pipes and channels for fluid management and sensing, and for wave guide applications.

Why Use LTCC?

The Benefits of Utilizing LTCC Over Other Popular Substrate Technologies

LTCC is best suited for applications that can take advantage of one or more of the following:

Good electrical performance
Dimensional and electrical stability under temperature, moisture and mechanical stress
High density, through embedded passives and bare semiconductor die
3D capability, cavities, channels
Effective thermal management with metal loaded vias
Hermeticity
Matched TCE with semiconductors (Thermal Coefficient of Expansion)
Multiple assembly and packaging solutions

LTCC Advantages Over Organic PCB

Higher operating temperature up to 350ºC
Lower expansion coefficient
Good thermal properties
Superior high frequency performance
Higher integration density: Embedded passives and higher layer count possible
Higher reliability: eliminates interconnections by integrating passives
Lower system cost: reduces test, insertion, assembly
Smaller package size due to integration
Cost effective for dense package due to parallel processing of layers
Hermetic packages possible

LTCC Advantages Over Thick Film

Cavities and high number of layers
Higher breakdown voltages between layers
Mixed metals easier to control – hermetic encapsulation of low cost silver interconnect
Surface topology smoother
Well defined dielectric thicknesses and therefore suitable for microwave signal transmission
Cavities allow:
- Localised hermetic sealing
- Reduced thickness under die (Reduced thermal paths)
- Short, profiled wirebonds

LTCC Advantages Over HTCC

Lower resistance metalization i.e., Au & Ag Vs W & Mo
Higher number of layers
Lower tooling costs
Shorter prototype cycles
More embedded passive option i.e., alternate dielectrics
Higher flexibility of post print metal and dielectric options
Lower dielectric constant ceramic tapes available
Higher level of part complexity and flexibility