Fabrication of Substrate-Integrated Waveguide Using Micromachining of Photoetchable Glass Substrate for 5G Millimeter-Wave Applications

A millimeter-wave substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) was firstly demonstrated using the micromachining of photoetchable glass (PEG) for 5G applications. A PEG substrate was used as a dielectric material of the SIW, and its photoetchable properties were used to fabricate through glass via (TGV) holes. Instead of the conventional metallic through glass via (TGV) array structures that are typically used for the SIW, two continuous empty TGV holes with metallized sidewalls connecting the top metal layer to the bottom ground plane were used as waveguide walls. The proposed TGV walls were fabricated by using optical exposure, heat development and anisotropic HF (hydrofluoric acid) etching of the PEG substrate, followed by a metal sputtering technique. The SIW was fed by microstrip lines connected to the waveguide through tapered microstrip-to-waveguide transitions. The top metal layer, including these feedlines and transitions, was fabricated by selective metal sputtering through a silicon shadow mask, which was prefabricated by a silicon deep-reactive ion-etching (DRIE) technique. The developed PEG-based process provides a relatively simple, wafer-level manufacturing method to fabricate the SIW in a low-cost glass dielectric substrate, without the formation of individual of TGV holes, complex time-consuming TGV filling processes and repeated photolithographic steps. The fabricated SIW had a dimension of 6 x 10 x 0.42 mm(3) and showed an average insertion loss of 2.53 +/- 0.55 dB in the Ka-band frequency range from 26.5 GHz to 40 GHz, with a return loss better than 13.86 dB. The proposed process could be used not only for SIW-based devices, but also for various millimeter-wave applications where a glass substrate with TGV structures is required.

Automated summary

This paper demonstrates the use of micromachining of photoetchable glass (PEG) for the fabrication of a millimeter-wave substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) for 5G applications. Instead of conventional metallic through glass via (TGV) array structures, two continuous empty TGV holes with metallized sidewalls were used as waveguide walls. The proposed process provides a simple and low-cost method to fabricate SIW in a glass dielectric substrate. The fabricated SIW showed good performance in terms of insertion loss and return loss in the Ka-band frequency range.