Signal integrity study of high density through silicon via (TSV) technology

Abstract

This paper explores the electrical performance of several multi-channel TSV designs i.e. cross-etched full-plated TSV and cross-etched partial-plated TSV to further improve data transmission bandwidth among the vertically stacked silicon devices. The electrical characteristics of the multi-channel TSV designs were investigated and compared against the conventional TSV design in terms of return loss, insertion loss, near-end (NEXT) and far-end (FEXT) crosstalk. Fullwave electromagnetic simulation data showed the insertion loss performance of the multi-channel TSV designs are at par with the conventional TSV design up-to 50GHz. Meanwhile, the multi-channel TSV designs were found yielding improved NEXT and FEXT crosstalk performance. Transient analyses of respective TSV designs are also included in this paper for more conclusive discussions.