Component-Level Shielding with Assembled Copper Trenches in Package Slots

This paper presents a study of a monolithic copper (Cu) as an electromagnetic interference (EMI) shield, using a new testing methodology based on assembled copper trenches slots. This approach enables short-loop qualification of various component placement and shield designs with initial validation using a shorter development cycle time. The first part of the paper provides the shielding properties of Cu at the layer level. This is done using the shielding effectiveness (SE) of Cu in the far field subject to a plane wave is addressed. The second part of the paper studies the performance of Cu for component EMI shielding within electronic circuit boards. This study provides the SE of Cu for a near-field source in the presence of magnetic and electric field sources. Two cases are studied involving different dielectric materials with low dielectric constants (epsilon(gamma)) of 4.4 and, 10.2 corresponding to FR4 and RO3010, respectively. Cu is used to enhance the isolation between feeding lines (TLs) for reduced crosstalk. Furthermore, Cu is used to mitigate coupling between antennas to increase their isolation for multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) systems. Measurement and validation suggest that the evolution technique is effective and accurate in evaluating the effectiveness of various shield configurations.