High-speed digital and wireless devices radiate undesired electromagnetic noises that affect the normal operation of other devices causing electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems. Printed circuit board (PCB) and system-level shielding may alleviate inter-system EMI between the PCB board and the outside environment, but does not prevent intra-system EMI within the shielding enclosure. Package and System in Package (SiP) level shielding is often used to minimize intra-system EMI issues. An external metal lid is traditionally employed to prevent noise emission from a device, but the cost and size of this technique makes it unattractive for modern electronics. Conformal shielding is gaining momentum due to its size and height advantages. However, high cost and complexity of the sprayed coating shield prevents it from being used for a wide range of low cost commercial applications.
In this paper, an innovative shielding technology with sputtered metal conformal shield is investigated using a specially designed test vehicle. By sputtering a conductive material onto a package, a very thin (typically a few μm) metal layer is constructed on the top and around four sides of the package. This thin sputtered metal layer adds virtually zero penalty to the package size. The cost and complexity of the sputtering process is significantly lower compared to a spraying process.
Several types of shielded and unshielded modules were built and extensively tested for both far-field and near-field shielding effectiveness (SE) in a semi-anechoic chamber. The performance of the sputtered conformal shield is compared to that of an unshielded module and the sprayed shield. The measured results show that the sputtered shield performs equally well to a sprayed shield, in far field test, with most measurements better than 40 dB of SE.
In near field testing, sputtered shields mostly outperform the sprayed shield, especially when compared in the entire scanned region. A well-designed sputtered conformal shield can, therefore, be a very cost-effective EMI solution for a wide range of packages, such as SiP. Also in the paper, a full wave 3D HFSS model is presented and simulated results for both far and near field are compared with measured data.