A Wafer Level Packaged Limiting Amplifier for 10Gbps Optical Transmission System

A 10 Gb/s limiting amplifier IC with the emitter area of $1.5{\times}10{\mu}m^2$ for optical transmission system was designed and fabricated with a AIGaAs/GaAs HBTs technology. In this stud)', we evaluated fine pitch bump using WL-CSP (Wafer Level-Chip Scale Packaging) instead of conventional wire bonding for interconnection. For this we developed WL-CSP process and formed fine pitch solder bump with the $40{\mu}m$ diameter and $100{\mu}m$ pitch on bonding pad. To study the effect of WL-CSP, electrical performance was measured and analyzed in wafer and package module using WL-CSP. In a package module, clear and wide eye diagram openings were observed and the riselfall times were about 100ps, and the output" oltage swing was limited to $600mV_{p-p}$ with input voltage ranging from 50 to 500m V. The Small signal gains in wafer and package module were 15.56dB and 14.99dB respectively. It was found that the difference of small signal gain in wafer and package module was less then 0.57dB up to 10GHz and the characteristics of return loss was improved by 5dB in package module. This is due to the short interconnection length by WL-CSP. So, WL-CSP process can be used for millimeter wave GaAs MMIC with the fine pitch pad.