Ultra-wide Bandwidth Inter-Chip Interconnects for Heterogeneous Millimeter-Wave and THz Circuits

Heterogeneous chip-to-chip interconnects with low loss and ultra-wide bandwidths have been demonstrated. Coplanar waveguide-based interconnects between GaAs and Si die have been fabricated and characterized and the results compared to expectations from full-wave electromagnetic simulation. Broadband transmission characteristics were obtained, with insertion losses below 0.3 dB at 100 GHz and below 0.8 dB at frequencies up to 220 GHz demonstrated experimentally. The measured return loss exceeded 11.5 dB at all frequencies up to 220 GHz. The interconnects offer low latency, with a measured group delay of 0.69 ps. The measured results are in good agreement with full-wave simulations, indicating that the measured results do not suffer from significant impairments compared to theoretical predictions. The demonstrated interconnects offer an alternative to conventional approaches to millimeter-wave circuit and system integration, by enabling the compact realization of circuits in the microwave, millimeter-wave, sub-millimeter-wave, and THz frequency regimes in heterogeneous device technologies with very low chip-to-chip insertion loss.