SemiGen has released a new tech brief "Leveraging the Precision of Ion Beam Milling Vs. Chemical Etching of Thin Film Circuits" detailing the advantages of ion beam milling for RF/microwave circuit manufacturing compared to chemical etching.

According to the company, the thin film circuits use an anisotropic ion beam milling process rather than traditional material subtraction via chemical etching.

The brief describes experiments conducted by the former Ion Beam Milling Inc. technical team (now SemiGen) which thoroughly examined the degree of variation in performance of two RF filter circuit designs, one at 12 GHz and the other at 24 GHz. Each were produced via the two processes.

The tech brief argues that the ion beam milling process produces precise and repeatable thin film circuits and improves design for manufacturability (DFM) expertise of engineering teams, while also improving performance and yields. This is especially true for circuit designers who work consistently above 1 GHz. The degree of performance improvement is tied to a variety of factors, including the complexity of the circuit design, feature size and proximity of trace lines.

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