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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS, PACKAGING AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 3, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013

Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of a

Wideband 60 GHz Bandpass Filter Based on a
Flexible PerMX Polymer Substrate
Seonho Seok and Janggil Kim

Abstract This paper presents a wideband 60 GHz bandpass

filter fabricated on a flexible PerMX polymer substrate. A
conventional parallel-coupled half-wavelength resonator filter is
selected as an embedded passive device. A narrow gap of 5 m
between 750-m-long resonators is successfully fabricated thanks
to a Si support substrate. Surface modification is used to release
the flexible polymer substrate from the Si substrate after the
filter fabrication. A wideband filter is achieved through the
optimization of the narrow gaps between the adjacent resonators.
The designed filters are implemented in two different types,
without a cover and with a cover. The filter without a cover
shows an insertion loss of 4 dB at the center frequency of
63.5 GHz and a return loss of better than 10 dB including
two CPW pads, while the filter with a cover has an insertion
loss of 3.8 dB at 59 GHz and a return loss of better than
13 dB. In addition, the uncovered filter has a 3-dB bandwidth
of 24% at 63.5 GHz, while the covered filter shows 28% at
59 GHz.
Index Terms Bandpass filter, flexible, PerMX, polymer,
wideband.

I. I NTRODUCTION

S THE need for distributed sensors for many applications

such as environment monitoring increases, multifunctional and multisensing systems with communication capability are strongly demanded. These kinds of sensor systems have
to be packaged to protect themselves [1] and to be assembled on a common platform, so-called system-in-package
(SIP), with other functional chips such as RF transceiver
and signal processing circuits [2]. In general, multilayer lowtemperature cofired ceramic (LTCC)-based SIP technology
integrating monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs)
and passive devices is a notable solution for millimeterwave radio system integration due to its low loss, integration
capability, similar coefficient of temperature expansion (CTE)
value to MMICs, and cost effectiveness [3]. Recently, liquid
crystal polymer (LCP), as a new and advanced candidate
for RF substrate material, has attracted much attention over
the past years due to the unique combination of features

Manuscript received July 26, 2012; revised November 12, 2012; accepted
December 27, 2012. Date of publication February 7, 2013; date of current
version July 31, 2013. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor
D. G. Kam upon evaluation of reviewers comments.
The authors are with Institute dElectronique de Microelectronique et de
Nanotechnologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Villeneuve
dAscq 59652, France (e-mail: seonho.seok@iemn.univ-lille1.fr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCPMT.2013.2240040

and performance [4]. However, there are still needs for new
materials and the associated technology development due
to the high process temperature for laminating each layers,
the high stress development of the multilayered ones, chip
embedding for a compact SIP realization, etc. As an alternative
way to overcome these disadvantages, other polymer materials
are proposed as an RF substrate [5] or a packaging cap [6] due
to their excellent electrical properties and manufacturability.
Their multilayer lamination capability is useful to build an RF
SIP platform. The advantages of the proposed material are the
low temperature process (<150 C), mechanical flexibility, low
cost, etc. In addition, its low dielectric constant provides some
advantages to an antenna implementation for SIP applications.
Also, embedded passive components based on thin film technology have been reported to benefit fine pitch interconnect
and cost-effective solution [7].
In this paper, a wideband millimeter-wave filter fabricated
on a flexible PerMX polymer is presented. In Section II, the
characterization of the PerMX polymer using a microstrip
line will be first assessed and the concept and design of the
proposed filter will be described in Section III. Section IV
deals with the fabrication process of the filter based on
PerMX lamination and gold electroplating. In Section V, the
characterization result of the fabricated filter will be presented.
II. PerMX P OLYMER
PerMX film-type polymer is very attractive for a millimeterwave application because it has good electrical properties [8].
Also, it can be processed on substrates such as Si and glass
by lamination that can provide its multilayer structures for
SIP-based millimeter-wave applications. First of all, different
length microstrip lines are designed, fabricated, and measured
to find its suitability for millimerter-wave applications. The
width of the microstrip line is designed to be 85 m on a
50-m-thick PerMX substrate with dielectric constant of 3.
The lengths of each line are 1, 2, and 3 mm. Fig. 1 shows the
fabricated microstrip lines and its S-parameter measurement
result. The microstrip line has an insertion loss of 0.5 dB/mm
at 60 GHz while a return loss is better than 17 dB up to
70 GHz.
III. C ONCEPT AND D ESIGN OF THE F ILTER
A. Filter Concept
The concept of the proposed filter based on PerMX polymers is shown in Fig. 2. It consists of three PerMX layers

2156-3950/$31.00 2013 IEEE

SEOK AND KIM: DESIGN, FABRICATION, AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A WIDEBAND 60 GHz BANDPASS FILTER BASED

1385

Via2
Cover layer
: PerMX, t=14 m
Probe access
(a)
0

Substrate layer
: PerMX, t=50 m

-10

-1

Filter
S11(dB)

-2
-30

S21(dB)

-20

Via1
Base layer
: PerMX, t=50 m

-3
-40

GND
L = 1 mm
L = 2 mm
L = 3 mm

-50

-4

-60

-5
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 2.

Concept of the filter based on PerMX polymers.

(b)
Fig. 1. RF characteristic of the PerMX polymer. (a) Fabricated microstrip line
on a 50-m PerMX polymer. (b) Measured S-parameters of the micropstrip
lines.

GND

and three metal layers that are interconnected by two vias

(via1 and via2 as indicated in the figure). The thickness of the
PerMX is 50 m for the base layer and the substrate layer
and 14 m for the cover layer. The commercially available
PerMX films from Dupont Company are PerMX 3014, PerMX
3020, and PerMX 3050 that have a thickness of 14, 20, and
50 m, respectively [8]. The filters have been implemented in
a two-layered PerMX substrate or a three-layered PerMX one
including the cover. The covered PerMX can be considered as
a polymer embedded filter chip.

Z0

W1,S1

W2,S2

W3,S3

W4,S4

Z0

B. Filter Design
A parallel-coupled, half-wavelength resonator filter shown
in Fig. 3 was first designed following the standard design
procedure in [9]. The three-pole, 15% bandwidth, and 0.1 dB
ripple at midband f0 = 60 GHz were used to find g values
for a low-pass prototype. Even- and odd-mode characteristic
impedances of the coupled microstrip line resonators are found
and then the widths and the gaps of the coupled microstrip
lines that exhibit the desired even- and odd-mode impedances
are determined. Concerning the gap of the coupled resonator,
it has a constraint of 7.5 m due to technological issues. The
length of the microstrip line is 750 m corresponding to the
quarter wavelength at the frequency of interest. Note that the
dielectric constant of the PerMX material is 3 and the loss
tangent is 0.03.
Given the analytical dimensions, the HFSS model is set
up to find the optimized dimensions of the filter having low

Fig. 3.

Parallel-coupled half-wave length resonator filter.

insertion loss and wide bandwidth. The optimized dimensions

are S1 = S4 = 7.5 m, S2 = S3 = 20 m, W1 = W4 =
70 m, and W2 = W3 = 80 m. Through the optimization,
it is found that S1 and S2 are the critical parameters for low
insertion loss and wide bandwidth of the filter, respectively.
The simulated results on these critical parameters are shown
in Fig. 4. The insertion loss at the center frequency of 63
GHz varies from 3.9 dB for S1 of 5 m to 4.5 dB for
10 m when S2 is assumed 20 m and 3-dB bandwidth
is from 30% for 15 m S2 to 22% for 25 m S2 at the
assumption of S1 = 7.5 m. In addition, the cover layer effect
has been investigated as a function of cover height as shown in
Fig. 5. The cover thickness is determined as the smallest one

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0

GND

PerMX

PerMX

OmniCoat

-4

Si substrate

Si substrate

-20

(a)

-40
-12

-60

S1=5 m, S2=20 m

-80

S11 (dB)

S21 (dB)

-8

(b)
PerMX
Filter

PerMX

PerMX
PerMX

-16

PerMX

-20

Si substrate

Si substrate

S1=7.5 m, S2=20 m
S1=10 m, S2=20 m

(c)

-24

-100

Pad

20

40

60

80

(d)
Via

PerMX

100

PerMX

Frequency (GHz)

PerMX (Cover)

PerMX

(a)

PerMX (Substrate)

PerMX (Base)
Si substrate

-4

-40

-8

-60

-12

(e)
S11(dB)

S21(dB)

-20

(f)

Fig. 6. Filter fabrication process flow. (a) PerMX lamination. (b) Gold
electroplating for ground. (c) PerMX lamination. (d) Filter plating and PerMX
patterning. (e) Via and pad plating. (f) Separation of PerMX filter chip.
TABLE I
PerMX P ROCESS C ONDITIONS

S1=7.5 m, S2=15 m

-80

-16

S1=7.5 m, S2=20 m

Step

S1=7.5 m, S2=25 m

-20

-100
0

20

40

60

80

100

Frequency (GHz)

Conditions

Lamination

Hot roll @ 65 C

Soft bake

4 min @ 95 C

(b)

Expose

400 mJ

PEB

10 min @ 60 C

Fig. 4. HFSS simulation results of the filter without the cover. (a) Filter
characteristics as a function of S1 . (b) Filter characteristics as a function
of S2 .

Develop

PGMEA, 5 min

Hard bake

30 min @ 150 C

-4

-20

S21 (dB)

-12

S11 (dB)

-8
-40

-60
-16

-80

Cover height=14m
Cover height=28m
Cover height=50m

-20

-100

-24
0

20

40

60

80

100

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 5.

HFSS simulation results of the filter with the cover.

among the commercially available films. The center frequency

of the filter decreases as the effective dielectric constant is
proportional to the cover thickness.
IV. FABRICATIONS
The designed filter is fabricated using PerMX 3050 polymer
for substrate and base and PerMX 3014 for cover. Each PerMX
layer is named in Fig. 6(f). Gold metallization has been carried
out to have 2-m-thick metal lines for the filter and ground
plane. Fig. 6 shows the process flow of the filter. (a) PerMX

film (t = 50 m) is laminated on the Si substrate coated

with OmniCoat. It is used to modify the Si surface condition
for easier release of PerMX substrate after the fabrication.
(b) Gold electroplating is performed for the ground plane.
(c) PerMX film (t = 50 m) is laminated on the top of
the ground plane. (d) Gold electroplating is carried out for
the filter and the PerMX film (t = 14 m) is laminated. It
is patterned to make a via between the filter and the pad
access. (e) Gold electroplating is performed for the via and
the pad access. (f) The PerMX substrate is separated from the
Si substrate by NH4 F immersion.
The PerMX lamination process and its conditions are given
in Table I [10].
To investigate the filter characteristic itself, it is first
fabricated without the cover PerMX. The fabrication result
is shown in Fig. 7. The size of the implemented filter is
5.4 mm (L) 4.2 mm (W) including the probe pad and the
ground plane. The thickness of the fabricated PerMX substrate
is 47 m.
The actual dimensions of the fabricated filter are measured
using a microscope: 5.4 m for S1 , 12.3 m for S2 , 72 m
for W1 , and 82 m for W2 . It can be said that the fabrication
errors on the metallization would be the main reason of the
disparity between the simulation and the measurements.
As shown in the aforementioned figures, there is a warpage
at the PerMX filter chips. It is caused by the residual stress

SEOK AND KIM: DESIGN, FABRICATION, AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A WIDEBAND 60 GHz BANDPASS FILTER BASED

1387

(a)

(b)

Fig. 7. Fabricated filter without the cover PerMX. (a) Frontside. (b) Backside.
250

Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4
Sample 5

Height (m)

200

(a)

150

100

50

0
1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

Scan length (m)

Measured deflection of PerMX filter chips.

effect of the associated materials. Gold metallization on the

thin PerMX polymer develops a tensile stress making substrate warpage. The deflection from five samples is measured
through A as indicated in Fig. 7(b). Fig. 8 shows the measured
deflection of the fabricated PerMX chips and the average
maximum deflection is 215 m.
The filter with the cover is implemented in wafer type,
not in separated chips type as the previous one. It can be
considered as a flexible substrate embedding a filter element.
The fabrication result is shown in Fig. 9. The flexible PerMX
substrate is successfully released as shown in Fig. 9(a) and it
is bended as shown in Fig. 9(b).
V. C HARACTERIZATIONS AND D ISCUSSION
The manufactured filters are characterized by the HP8510C
vector network analyzer and the ground-signal-ground
(G-S-G) probe system. The filter without the cover having
7.5 m S1 and 20 m S2 is first characterized. The measured
S-parameter is compared with the ADS and HFSS simulation
results as shown in Fig. 10. It has an insertion loss of 4 dB at
the center frequency of 63.5 GHz while its return loss is better
than 10 dB including the CPW pads. It has a 3-dB bandwidth
of 24% at the center frequency. The measurement has good
agreement with the simulation results.
The filter with the cover is then measured and compared
with the measurement of the uncovered filter as shown in
Fig. 11. The center frequency of the covered filter is shifted

(b)
Fig. 9. Fabricated flexible PerMX substrate embedding filters. (a) PerMX
substrate after the separation of Si support wafer. (b) Bended PerMX flexible
substrate.
0

-20

-4

-40
-8

S21(dB)

Fig. 8.

-60

S11(dB)

-12
-80

ADS simulation
HFSS simulation
Measurement

-100

-16

-20

-120
0

20

40

60

80

100

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 10.

Characteristic of the filter without the cover.

to 59 GHz from the center frequency of 63.5 GHz of

the uncovered filter while the insertion loss decreases from
4 to 3.8 dB after covering the filter. The 3-dB bandwidth is
also increased from 24% in the uncovered filter to 28% in the
covered filter.
The filter is also measured at flexible conditions as shown
in Fig. 12. Three different radii of curvatures of 71.5, 25, and
12.5 mm have been used to find the effect of the substrate

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-5

-40
-10

-60

S11 (dB)

S21 (dB)

-20

VI. C ONCLUSION

-15

-80

Without cover
With cover
HFSS simulation

-20

-100
0

20

40

60

80

100

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 11. Characteristic of the filter without the cover comparing with HFSS
simulation and the filter with the cover.

Curved
chuck

Flexible
substrate

The SIP approach with communication capability emerges

as a notable solution to accomplish multifunctional sensor
systems. LTCC-based or LCP-based SIP technologies are
regarded as one of the promising solutions for millimeter-wave
radio system integration owing to the RF friendly material
characteristics, integration capability, similar CTE value to
MMICs, and cost effectiveness although it has disadvantage
of high dielectric constant and relatively high process temperature.
Unlike conventional approaches, polymers such as BCB,
SU8, and PerMX can be strong candidates for the purpose. In particular, PerMX has low residual stress and low
temperature process (< 150 C). In RF aspect, microstrip
lines on PerMX showed promising performance in terms of
insertion loss and return loss. Furthermore, a passive filter
was implemented on the PerMX polymer in a separate chip
and in a flexible substrate. In particular, the flexible substrate
is interesting due to its manufacturability and the capability
embedding passive components for an RF SIP application. The
implemented filter demonstrated competitive performance in
terms of insertion loss, return loss, and 3-dB bandwidth at
60 GHz frequency and also demonstrated uniform characteristics at different curvatures. In conclusion, the proposed
polymer substrate can be a good solution for a flexible
miniaturized SIP employing embedded passives and embedded
(or flip-chipped) thinned functional chips.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Fig. 12. Flexible substrate on a curved chuck (radius of curvature = 71.5 mm).

-25

-4

-50

-8

-75

-12

radius of curvature = 71.5 mm

radius of curvature = 25 mm
radius of curvature = 12.5 mm

-100

S11 (dB)

S21 (dB)

R EFERENCES

-16

-125

-20
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

The authors would like to acknowledge the technical staff

with the Institute dElectronique de Microelectronique et de
Nanotechnologie (IEMN), Villeneuve dAscq, France. They
would also like to thank the CSAM Group, IEMN.

80

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 13. Measurement results of the flexible substrate as a function of radius

of curvature.

bending on the filter performance. Fig. 13 shows the measurement results and it does not show much difference at the filter
characteristic because the gap change between each resonators
of the filter due to the bending is not significant.

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[3] Y. C. Lee and C. S. Park, A fully embedded 60 GHz novel BPF
for LTCC system-in-package applications, IEEE Trans. Adv. Packag.,
vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 804809, Nov. 2006.
[4] R. Bairavasubramanian, S. Pinel, J. Laskar, and J. Papapolymerou,
Compact 60-GHz bandpass filters and duplexers on liquid crystal
polymer technology, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 16,
no. 5, pp. 237239, May 2006.
[5] M. F. Davis, S.-W. Yoon, S. Mandal, N. Bushyager, M. Maeng, K. Lim,
S. Pinel, A. Sutono, J. Laskar, M. Tentzeris, T. Nonaka, V. Sundaram,
F. Liu, and R. Tummala, RF-microwave multi-band design solutions
for multilayer organic system on package integrated passives, in IEEE
MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp. Dig., Jun. 2002, pp. 22172220.
[6] S. Seok, N. Rolland, and P.-A. Rolland, Packaging methodology for
RF devices using a BCB membrane transfer technique, J. Micromech.
Microeng., vol. 16, no. 11, pp. 23842388, Nov. 2006.
[7] L. Wang, W. Christiaens, S. Brebels, W. De Raedt, and J. Vanfleteren,
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[10] J. Kim, S. Seok, N. Rolland, and P. A. Rolland, Low-temperature,

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Seonho Seok received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in

electrical engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1999 and 2004, respectively.
He was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the
Center for Advanced Transceiver Systems, Seoul
National University. In 2005, he joined the Institute dElectronique de Microelectronique et de Nanotechnologie, Villeneuve dAscq, France, as a PostDoctoral Research Scholar, where he has been a
CNRS Senior Researcher since 2007. His current
research interests include wafer bonding techniques,
wafer-level packaging of microelectromechanical system devices, and systemin-package.

1389

Janggil Kim was born in 1977 in Korea. He

received the degree in mechanical engineering from
Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, and the
Ph.D. degree, with research on development of
soft-lithographic technology for micropatterning on
nonplanar surfaces, from the University of Tokyo,
Tokyo, Japan.
He was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo. Since
2009, he has been a Post-Doctoral Researcher with
the CSAM Group, IRCICA/Institute dElectronique
de Microelectronique et de Nanotechnologie, Villeneuve dAscq, France.
His current research interests include development of zero-level packaging
technology for radio frequency-microelectromechanical system applications
and realization of system-in-package.