Development of Thin-Film Liquid Crystal Polymer Surface Mount Packages for Ka-band Applications

We present the development of thin-film liquid crystal polymer (LCP) surface mount packages for packaging MMIC´s in Ka-band. The packages are constructed using multilayer LCP films and can be surface mounted on a printed circuit board. Our experimental results demonstrate that the package feed-through transition including bond wires achieve a return loss of -15 dB at 30 GHz and an insertion loss of less than 1 dB in the Ka-band. With the use of an off-package matching network, we achieve the input return loss of less than ~ -15 dB from 28 GHz to 31 GHz and less than ~ -20 dB from 31 GHz to 36 GHz. The use of LCP enclosure provides the near hermetic capabilities in a compact structure