Characteristics of Anisotropic Conducting Polymers Suggest Feasibility of Test Fixtures up to 110 GHz

Applications and volume of integrated circuits operating at frequencies up to 100 GHz are steadily increasing. This establishes serious challenges, especially for temporarily contacting such products during manufacturing tests with appropriate signal integrity. At present, existing test socket concepts have reached their applicability limit. The most promising candidates to meet the requirements of future microwave device interfacing are thin, anisotropic conducting polymers. This paper reports a survey covering measurement methodology for signal integrity properties of conducting polymers, model parameter extraction, measurement results from various materials, reliability issues, and a prototype application.