Novel High-Performance Bondwire Chip-to-Chip Interconnections for Applications Up to 220 GHz

This letter presents a novel chip-to-chip interconnect technology for millimeter-wave and ultra-wideband applications. The technique relies on magnetic coupling between half-loop bondwires to transfer power over pads of semiconductor dies provided with crack stops. Conventional aluminum wires with a diameter of 17 μm are used to fabricate a set of low-cost half-loops, investigating the performance of the interface. The technique demonstrated minimum insertion loss of 1.9 dB over frequency bands wider than 40 GHz located in the band 140-220 GHz. Agreement with simulations is also shown. To the best of the author's knowledge, the presented solution is the first bondwire chip-to-chip interconnections for ultra-wideband operations up to 220 GHz and suitable to chips provided with crack stops.