Patent Application
20080067941
The following description, given with respect to the attached drawing, may be better understood with reference to the non-limiting examples of the drawing, wherein the FIGURE shows a shielded IC package.
The figure shows an integrated structure 100 in which IC 102 is integrated with an ultra-small resonant structure (URS) 104. The IC may be any IC formed, e.g., with conventional semiconductor processing. The ultra-small resonant structure(s) may be any ultra-small resonant structure(s). Exemplary ultra-small resonant structures are described in the various related applications which have been incorporated herein by reference. Although only one ultra-small resonant structure, those skilled in the art will realize and understand, upon reading this description, that many such structures may be provided.
As noted above, the ultra-small resonant structure(s) use a charged particle beam (e.g., an electron beam) to create and/or detect EMR, including in the optical frequency ranges.
A source 106 of charged particles 108 is also provided. The source 106 may be formed on the same IC as the URS 104, or it may be located elsewhere (e.g., on another chip or IC).
Shielding 110 is provided to prevent interference with the charged particle beam 108 from other sources such as, stray electric, magnetic and/or electromagnetic fields. The shielding 110 may be formed around the entire IC or to protect only parts thereof.
Preferably the shielding 110 is formed from a high-permeability magnetic material, e.g., non-conductive magnetic oxides such as the ferrites MnFe2 O4, FeFe2 O4, CoFe2 O4, NiFe2 O4, CuFe2 O4, and/or MgFe2 O4. Cobaltites, chromites, manganites and other materials. Commercially-available shielding materials, e.g., ferromagnetic shielding materials generally, specific shielding materials sold under the trade names MUMETAL, PERMALLOY, etc., and others may also be used.
MuMetal is a nickel-iron alloy (composed of 77% nickel, 15% iron, plus copper and molybdenum) that has a high magnetic permeability and that is highly effective for shielding magnetic fields. MuMetal is one trade name for a high-permeability, magnetically “soft” alloy. Other trade names include Hipernom, HyMu-80 and Permalloy.
High permeability makes mumetal effective at screening static or low-frequency magnetic fields, which cannot generally be attenuated by other methods. (See, e.g., “Shielding and Guarding, How to Exclude Interference-Type Noise, What to do and why to do it—A Rational Approach,” Alan Rich, Analog Devices, Application Note AN-347, Analog Dialog 1983, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.)
Both conductive and non-conductive shielding materials may be used, depending e.g., on proximity to integrated circuit packages or other electronics in the device.
Depending on the type of shielding, it may be applied by incorporating it into other supporting material, and/or it may be applied (e.g., by spraying or sputtering) onto an IC assembly.
Magnetic shielding may also be used within, e.g., integrated circuit packages, MCM packages and the like.
Those skilled in the art will realize and understand, upon reading this description, that different and/or other materials with similar magnetic properties may be used, e.g., supermalloy, supermumetal, nilomag, sanbold, Mo-Permalloy, Ultraperm, M-1040, and the like.
The ultra-small resonant structures may be made, e.g., using techniques such as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/917,511, entitled “Patterning Thin Metal Film by Dry Reactive Ion Etching” and/or U.S. application Ser. No. 11/203,407, entitled “Method Of Patterning Ultra-Small Structures,” both of which have been incorporated herein by reference.
The ultra-small resonant structure may comprise any number of resonant microstructures constructed and adapted to produce EMR, e.g., as described above and/or in any of the related applications, including U.S. applications Ser. Nos. 11/325,448; 11/325,432; 11/243,476; 11/243,477; 11/302,471; 11/400,280; and 11/410,924, each of which is described in greater detail above in the Section headed “Cross-Reference To Related Applications,” and each of which is fully incorporated herein by reference.
While certain configurations of structures have been illustrated for the purposes of presenting the basic structures of the present invention, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that other variations are possible which would still fall within the scope of the appended claims. While the invention has been described in connection with what is presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the disclosed embodiment, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
The present invention is related to the following co-pending U.S. Patent applications which are all commonly owned with the present application, the entire contents of each of which are incorporated herein by reference: (1) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/238,991, filed Sep. 30, 2005, entitled “Ultra-Small Resonating Charged Particle Beam Modulator”;(2) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/917,511, filed on Aug. 13, 2004, entitled “Patterning Thin Metal Film by Dry Reactive Ion Etching”;(3) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/203,407, filed on Aug. 15, 2005, entitled “Method Of Patterning Ultra-Small Structures”;(4) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/243,476, filed on Oct. 5, 2005, entitled “Structures And Methods For Coupling Energy From An Electromagnetic Wave”;(5) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/243,477, filed on Oct. 5, 2005, entitled “Electron beam induced resonance,”(6) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/325,448, entitled “Selectable Frequency Light Emitter from Single Metal Layer,” filed Jan. 5, 2006;(7) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/325,432, entitled, “Matrix Array Display,” filed Jan. 5, 2006;(8) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/410,924, entitled, “Selectable Frequency EMR Emitter,” filed Apr. 26, 2006;(9) U.S. application Ser. No. 11/__,___, entitled, “Multiplexed Optical Communication between Chips on A Multi-Chip Module,” filed on even date herewith [atty. docket 2549-0035];(10) U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/400,280, titled “Micro Resonant Detector for Optical Signals on a Chip,” filed Apr. 10, 2006.
