4880 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 63, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2016
Electrical Characterization of Coaxial
Silicon–Insulator–Silicon Through-Silicon Vias:
Theoretical Analysis and Experiments
Zhiming Chen, Miao Xiong, Bohao Li, An’an Li, Yangyang Yan, and Yingtao Ding
Abstract—Coaxial through-silicon via (TSV) provides an
effective solution to achieve impedance matching, reduce trans-
mission loss, and suppress interference or noise coupling in
3-D/2.5-D heterointegrated systems. This paper presents a
fabrication friendly coaxial TSV configuration based on heav-
ily doped silicon–insulator–silicon (SIS) structure, whose elec-
trical characteristics are studied through deriving analytical
solution, performing numerical simulation, and conducting exper-
imental measurement. The distributed resistance–inductance–
capacitance–conductance (RLCG) parameters are calculated
from electromagnetic theory and semiconductor physics. Wide-
band S-parameters of the fabricated devices are obtained using
on-wafer measurement with deembedding technique, and then
compared against 3-D full-wave simulations and analytical solu-
tions, exhibiting good agreement up to 50 GHz. Results show that
the proposed coaxial SIS TSV offers flexible impedance control,
good matching, and low insertion loss, and supports 30-Gbps
data transmission with the simpler structure as well as the lower
fabrication cost compared with various coaxial TSV structures
reported to date.
Index Terms—Coaxial through-silicon via (TSV), eye dia-
gram, resistance–inductance–capacitance–conductance (RLCG)
model, silicon–insulator–silicon (SIS), 3-D ICs, wideband
S-parameters.
I. INTRODUCTION
A
3-D integration technology has attracted much atten-
tion both from the academics and industries for it can
not only provide an alternative solution to further increase
the packaging density of future electronic devices but also
facilitate heterogeneous integration of multifunctional sys-
tems [1]–[4]. As the key of 3-D integration, through-silicon
vias (TSVs) have also been studied aggressively, including
their manufacturing [5]–[7], modeling [8], [9], and electrical
characterization [10].
However, conventional TSVs are susceptible to coupling
noise and crosstalk, moreover, the lossy silicon substrate
(∼10 · cm) between the signal and ground TSVs as well
as the impedance mismatch results in significant loss and
Manuscript received August 23, 2016; revised October 3, 2016;
accepted October 11, 2016. Date of publication October 27, 2016; date
of current version November 22, 2016. This work was supported in
part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant
61301006 and Grant 61574016 and in part by 111 Project of China under
Grant B14010. The review of this paper was arranged by Editor M. S. Bakir.
(Corresponding author: Yingtao Ding)
The authors are with the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081,
China (e-mail: czm@bit.edu.cn; ytd@bit.edu.cn).
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/TED.2016.2618383
Fig. 1. Cross-sectional views of three coaxial TSV configurations using
Cu as the inner and outer conductors. (a) SiO
2
dielectric. (b) SiO
2
/Si mixed
dielectric. (c) Polymer dielectric.
poor signal integrity, especially at high frequencies [11], [12].
In order to overcome these drawbacks, coaxial TSVs with self-
shielding property have been proposed in [13]–[16], which
provide high immunity to noise and interference, avoid signal
reflection due to impedance mismatch, and reduce insertion
loss in radio frequency and millimeter-wave (MMW) signal
transmission or high-speed data communication.
Fig. 1 shows three main coaxial TSV configurations, which
all employ Cu as the conductive material but use different
kinds of dielectrics. Fig. 1(a) shows coaxial TSVs utilizing
SiO
2
as liner material [17], [18]. Since the SiO
2
liner thickness
is usually several hundred nanometers limited by chemical
vapor deposition, the achievable radius ratio n (outer shell
to inner conductor) is very close to unity, which leads to
small characteristic impedance and poor impedance matching.
The coaxial TSV configuration shown in Fig. 1(b) employs a
mixed SiO
2
/Si liner between the inner and outer conductors,
which helps to increase the ratio n for better impedance
matching [19]–[21], however, the transmission loss perfor-
mance of this kind of coaxial TSV is compromised due to
the insertion of a lossy silicon layer. In order to achieve low
transmission loss and well-controlled characteristic impedance
simultaneously, the structure using polymer liner is proposed
and successfully fabricated [12], [13], as shown in Fig. 1(c).
However, their overall TSV dimensions are on the order of
hundred micrometers, which are not suitable for high-density
3-D integration. Besides, since the previous works on coaxial
TSVs all utilize metal (e.g., copper) as the conductive material,
they involve a series of complicated fabrication processes to
form inner and outer conductors and dielectric layers.
In this paper, a coaxial TSV based on heavily doped silicon–
insulator–silicon (SIS) structure is proposed, fabricated, and
characterized, which employs the ultralow-resistivity sili-
con (ULRS) as the material for inner and outer conductors
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