It is the a monolithic metal circuit and component technology offering customers highly three-dimensional microwave electronics with embedded active die. The technology enables heterogeneous integration of the best of breed GaN, SiGe, Si, GaAs, and MEMS die into a “parasitic free” 3D stacked circuit module yielding unprecedented performance, size, integration, and thermal management.
Microwave signal routing is accomplished in air-dielectric micro-coax based transmission lines that provide a superior combination of low loss, high isolation, and high power handling. Micron level circuit precision across inches of distance enables embedded monolithic high performance passives such as couplers, baluns, splitters, power combiners, waveguides, and antennas. Because it is coax, it provides TEM mode propagation with no substrate modes and little radiation loss allowing design simulations to rapidly converge into real hardware providing rapid time to market. Precision interconnects and transitions are formed monolithically to allow interfacing to traditional connectors, circuits boards, and wirebonds.
It is a wafer-level process for producing 3-dimensional micro-structures in metal and dielectric. It can make many useful components. Most work to date has been in the area of microwave components based on micro-coaxial and cavity structures.
The PolyStrata process can produce tiny, high-density coaxial circuits for microwave and millimeter wave applications such as printed circuit board of coax . The coax has a center conductor that is fully isolated, with air as a dielectric. With this coax structures fabrication of feed networks, various passive components (baluns, filters, splitters, combiners), and combined hybrid components is possible.
Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems or MEMS are microstructures, usually fabricated in silicon, that make transducers, sensors, or actuators widely used today in consumer and automotive electronics. The PolyStrata process can create microstructures in
polymer and metal, where the thermal or mechanical properties of the metallic material can be an advantage compared to traditional MEMS. Metal MEMS structures, like antennas, can be monolithically fabricated in the same process as coax circuits to provide microwave system solutions.
In microwave and millimeter-wave systems, networks of coax lines deliver high-speed signals to various passive and active components. The coax medium provides a confined, single TEM non-dispersive mode from HF to 100GHz that can be routed three dimensionally with excellent phase control.
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Air dielectric decreases the loss and dispersion per unit distance
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20x smaller (than traditional coax) reduces unneeded weight and size
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85x smaller separation (than microstrip lines) for comparable line-to-line isolation, allows for much higher circuit density for high-isolation applications compared to traditional microwave networks
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1000x higher isolation than microstrip lines at standard dimensions and spacing
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Lithographically defined production ensures tight tolerances, excellent phase and amplitude control, and high-accuracy placement of bond pads—no tweaking, no tuning!
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Low temperature process allows it to be made on various substrates (including wafers with devices already on them)
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Multiple layers provides 3D circuits with isolated cross-overs and the ability to create embedded micro-mechanical features
Once the design stage is complete, fabrication of prototypes and testing is done. After successful prototyping and testing iterations prove that the system designs are ready for production, the PolyStrata development moves to a production phase, usually priced by the device.
The PolyStrata technology allows designers to create and fabricate networks, backplanes, hybrids, and even individual released passives. Nuvotronics has a library of components for 2 to 95 GHz that are already being fabricated and tested as listed:
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Filters, transmission-line and cavity resonators, and diplexers
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Hybrid and directional couplers - 10dB and 20dB coupled-line couplers, 90° and 180° hybrid couplers
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Power divider/combiners 1:2, 1:3, 1:4
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Patch-style antennas
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Jumpers, connectors, and transitions
