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Laser Prototyping of Microwave Circuits in LTCC Technology

Article  in  IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques · January 2010

DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.2009.2033846 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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3254 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2009
Laser Prototyping of Microwave Circuits
in LTCC Technology
M. Farhan Shafique, Student Member, IEEE, Kashif Saeed, Member, IEEE,
David Paul Steenson, Senior Member, IEEE, and Ian D. Robertson, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, a process for direct laser structuring of
microwave circuits in low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC)
technology is reported. An efficient alternative to screen printing
is proposed for prototyping circuits by laser patterning the con-
ductors on the unfired tape. A line width and gap of 50 m are
achieved with laser machining. A range of samples has been
studied using a scanning electron microscope in order to optimize
the process parameters. The surface roughness of laser-treated
samples is measured with a surface profiler and compared with the
untreated samples. A method of creating microvias and trenches
in thick LTCC substrate is also demonstrated. For 254 m thick
green tape, vias with a diameter and separation of 50 m are
realized along with trenches having a width as small as 30 m.
The method of optimizing the laser machining process is described
in detail. A band-stop mushroom resonator and a microstrip ring
resonator filter are fabricated and their results compared against
simulations.
Index Terms—Ceramics, laser machining, low-temperature
co-fired ceramic (LTCC), microwave circuits, multichip modules,
thick film circuits.
I. INTRODUCTION
W HILE silicon-based system-on-chip technology con-
tinues to advance rapidly, in microwave, millimeter-
wave and terahertz systems there remains a demand for
packaging solutions that provide the ability to integrate semi-
conductor devices from a wide range of technologies [1], [2].
Ceramic multichip module technology (MCM-C) is an excel-
lent candidate for this packaging requirement. It can provide
embedded passive components, hermeticity, and excellent
thermal and mechanical stability. Thick-film technology is
a well-established traditional technique for microelectronic
packaging. The layers of dielectric and conductor are printed
sequentially onto the alumina substrate. However, for sophis-
ticated multilayer thick-film fabrication [3], any small defect
may require a complete rebuild of the whole design and the
need for repeated firing cycles can make the fabrication process
very time consuming.
Manuscript received April 15, 2009; revised July 27, 2009. First published
November 13, 2009; current version published December 09, 2009. This work
was supported in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council under Grant EP/D068649/1 and in part by the COMSATS Institute of
Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.
The authors are with the Institute of Microwaves and Photonics, School of
Electronic and Electrical Engineering, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT,
U.K. (e-mail: elfms@leeds.ac.uk; i.d.robertson@leeds.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2009.2033846
0018-9480/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE
The alternatives to thick-film technology are high tempera-
ture co-fired ceramic (HTCC) and low-temperature co-fired ce-
ramic (LTCC). The repeated firing drawback of thick-film tech-
nology is overcome in these two technologies by cofiring the
complete circuit after laminating all the layers together. LTCC
has an advantage of low temperature sintering over HTCC. This
low temperature sintering allows the use of high conductivity
metals like gold, silver and copper. The parallel processing of
layers in LTCC technology allows the replacement of a defec-
tive layer at any stage before laminating. The tracks are usually
screen (or stencil) printed on individual layers and a width and
gap of 100 m are achievable with fine mesh screens. For a so-
phisticated multilayer LTCC design, a large number of screens
are required to pattern the conductors and filling the vias on
different layers, making prototyping of a new design relatively
costly and time consuming.
There are various alternatives to directly screen-printing the
conductor patterns. Photoimageable inks can be printed and pat-
terned photolithographically [4], although this requires high res-
olution masks and a controlled light environment [5]. These
photoimageable inks can yield tracks as small as 10 m [5].
Other techniques like inkjet and micropen deposition can be
used for a range of electronic and organic materials with pre-
cision and high resolution [6]. A technique known as thermal
spray is also useful, in which inks are sprayed at high velocity
and solidify when they land on the substrate [6]. High capital
investment is mandatory for the techniques such as focused ion
beams and nanolithography, although they do give outstanding
resolution. Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is another
well developed technique where a laser beam transfers mate-
rial from an optically transparent ribbon onto the substrate. An
organic vehicle is mixed with the depositing material to im-
prove the process quality and it is known as matrix-assisted
pulsed laser evaporation direct writing (MAPLE-DW) [6], [7].
These various processes have different tradeoffs with respect
to process quality, turnaround time of prototyping and capital
investment required. A very attractive solution for microwave
circuit prototyping is achieved with direct laser machining of
unfired ceramics [8]. The process is very fast and does not re-
quire chemicals or a controlled light environment. Moreover,
this technique provides a significant reduction of fabrication
time (to a few hours) and also allows the freedom to change
a design without requiring any new screens or masks.
In a recent study, the laser processing of different materials
was studied; fired alumina coated with platinum and gold was
treated with a frequency tripled Nd:YAG laser and laser struc-
turing of laminated green tapes was also commented on briefly
SHAFIQUE et al.: LASER PROTOTYPING OF MICROWAVE CIRCUITS IN LTCC TECHNOLOGY
[9]. In a study of microheaters [10], a laser was used to pattern
conductors on green tape with a gap as small as 80 m and width
of 50 m.
The realization of microvias with fine spacing is important for
millimeter-wave applications. For example, substrate integrated
waveguides [11]–[13] have a wide range of applications and
require precisely-fabricated vias or trenches to form sidewalls
[14]. Trenches are also important for microfluidic applications
of LTCC [15] in which a few microliters of liquid sample can be
channeled for analysis. An integrated cooling system in LTCC
has also been reported using channels to supply air or liquid to
reduce the temperature of a module [16].
Mechanical tools for drilling or punching vias have the dis-
advantage that direct contact with the substrate will lead to tool
wear and damage. Laser machining, on the other hand, does
not involve any direct contact with the substrate. Various laser
systems are commercially available and different studies show
the advantages of each laser types [16], [17]. Vias as small
as 75 m were drilled in 254 m thick substrate with 15 m
beam Nd:YVO4 laser [18]. The flexibility of laser processing
also opens up a range of new applications for LTCC technology
[19], [20].
In this study, we have concentrated on the laser machining
of conductors on unfired green tapes [8]. The effects of varying
laser parameters on a single green tape with printed conductor
have been examined in detail. A technique for optimizing the
direct laser machining is devised. The laser treated samples are
compared with untreated samples for their surface roughness.
A process of making trenches and microvias as small as 50 m
in thick green tapes is discussed. The process is then utilized
to fabricate microwave resonators. We have used the commer-
cially available ProtoLaser 200 Nd:Yag laser-based system from
LPKF laser and electronics. It provides good control of the dif-
ferent laser parameters which are critical for fine-line proto-
typing. The LTCC material shows low absorption when exposed
to the 1024 nm Nd:Yag laser, ablation of material occurs and the
gasses are extracted with a vacuum pump [21], [22]. This abla-
tion helps in cutting clean vias. In order to observe the samples
under a scanning electron microscope (SEM), they were pre-
pared by evaporating gold onto fired green tapes. To compare
the surface roughness of etched and unetched samples, the alpha
I/Q surface profiler was used.
II. PROCESS OVERVIEW
DuPont 943PX green tape dielectric with 254 m thickness
was used in this study. Silver-based conducting paste HF612
from DuPont was used for printing. The green tape was pre-
conditioned in an oven at 120 C for 30 min to undergo ini-
tial shrinkage. The tape has plastic backing for its surface pro-
tection. The tape was loaded in the laser machine along with
the plastic backing to drill vias and fiducials. The fiducials are
necessary for later stages of laser machining and alignment. A
larger number of fiducials helps in achieving better alignment of
the substrate. The vias in the green tape were metalized using a
screen printer. As a further aid to rapid prototyping, the plastic
backing can be used as a stencil for the printing of via-fill con-
ductor paste. A porous suction plate forces the paste into the
3255
TABLE I
LASER PARAMETERS
Fig. 1. Hatch lines and contour line.
vias when printed with a screen printer. The viscosity and par-
ticle size of paste are important for the optimum filling of vias.
An appropriate thinner can be added to the paste to adjust its vis-
cosity. After filling the vias the plastic backing was removed and
a square patch of 100 mm 100 mm was printed using a stan-
dard 280 screen mesh with the emulsion thickness of 10 m.
This resulted in a dried patch of 20 m thickness. It is recom-
mended to print the patch without drying the vias as this will
guarantee a proper contact. The green tape was then dried at
80 C for 10 min in an oven.
This green tape was then loaded into the laser machine with
the help of fiducials to ensure the proper alignment with the data.
The controlled laser etching on the tape removed the unwanted
silver, leaving the tracks and gaps. The energy from photons
converts into heat on striking the silver. This heat evaporates the
silver and the fumes can be extracted with a vacuum pump. The
substrate surface suffers some damage and a layer of a few mi-
crometers thickness is ablated along with the silver. The process
was repeated for other layers and these layers were then aligned
with the help of fiducials and pressed in an isostatic laminator
at 30 MPa and 70 C for 10 min followed by cofiring in a pro-
grammable box furnace.
III. LASER ETCHING
The laser used in this study has square beam shape of
25 m 25 m that is focused with a combination of lenses.
The characteristics of the laser equipment are shown in Table I.
The laser software uses a Gerber file. It fills the empty back-
ground area with horizontal lines. These lines are referred as
hatch lines. A special line which encloses the design edges is
called the contour line as shown in Fig. 1. The pitch of the
hatch lines, known as the hatch grid, and the contour line are
adjustable. These lines represent the tracks which the laser
beam follows on the substrate. The power, writing speed and
pulse repetition rate of the laser are controllable. To analyze
3256 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2009
TABLE II
WRITING SPEED OBSERVATIONS
these parameters, square patches of 15 mm 15 mm were
etched on green tape. Only one parameter was varied at a time,
keeping others constant around their mean values. However, the
dependant variables were adjusted to keep the ratio constant.
This scenario is explained in more detail later. The results ob-
tained were averaged from ten samples to reduce the ambiguity.
A. Writing Speed and Pulse Rate
The writing speed and pulse rates are two important param-
eters that are related to each other. A high pulse repetition rate
with high writing speed helps to complete the job quickly. These
two parameters were adjusted to keep the overlap between the
two successive pulses constant. This overlap becomes more sig-
nificant when a Gaussian or top-hat beam profile is used. The
overlap of half of a beam diameter can be used as a rule of thumb
as this will cover almost every beam profile. The hatching grid
was set to be 16 m. With the increase of writing speed the pulse
rate was increased to keep the overlap constant.
It was observed that even changing these parameters with
a constant ratio made a significant difference; a high writing
speed produced less absorption in the silver as compared to
low writing speed. The dominant variable is the writing speed;
a slow writing speed resulted in more damage to the substrate
surface. The speed was varied from 100 to 1000 mm/s with the
overlap ratio kept at 12.5 m. The laser penetrated the substrate
as deep as 30 m into the substrate for writing speeds below 150
mm/s. As the speed was increased above 200 mm/s the substrate
damage reduced to less than 5 m, although the silver residue
increased. These observations are summarized in Table II [8].
B. Laser Power
The laser power affects the substrate directly without
depending on any other parameter and is the most critical pa-
rameter. The green tape being soft in nature is easily damaged
with high laser power. When the maximum power of 13 W
was used, the laser burnt the substrate badly and created a hole
in the substrate. The same results were observed even with
increasing the writing speed to 1000 mm/s. The laser power
was then varied from 3.5 to 10.5 W while keeping the writing
speed constant at 500 mm/s and the pulse rate at 40 kHz. It
was observed that the substrate damage was as deep as 30 m
when the power was set above 7.8 W. At powers less than 5
W, the silver was not removed at all. However, laser power
between 5.2 and 7.5 W created the peel off effect. This power
range is high enough to peel off the silver, leaving the substrate
with little silver. This effect is shown in Fig. 2. The peel-off
effect left a silver residue when used over larger areas. The
observations are listed in Table III [8].
Fig. 2. Peel-off effect.
TABLE III
LASER POWER OBSERVATIONS
C. Hatching Grid
The hatching grid is the pitch of the hatch lines as shown in
Fig. 1. The writing speed and pulse repetition rate define the
substrate smoothness in one dimension and the hatching grid
defines the smoothness in the other dimension. It is a good idea
to keep the hatching grid and the ratio of writing speed to pulse
repetition rate the same to achieve uniform smoothness over a
larger area. This grid is defined with reference to beam shape;
for Gaussian and top-hat laser profiles, this grid can be set to
half of the beam diameter. The etching time can be reduced by
increasing the gap as long as it is not leaving any un-etched area
between two adjacent hatch tracks.
After analyzing the parameters individually, it was concluded
that these parameters cannot be optimized separately as they
are interdependent. So, an optimization procedure needed to be
devised to use this technique efficiently.
IV. OPTIMIZATION OF LASER PARAMETERS
The laser parameters were optimized while keeping in mind
the objective of high writing speed, low substrate damage, and
smooth conductor edges. The conductor was etched generally
from the substrate followed by etching the contour line to im-
prove the edge resolution. However, in removing silver from the
green tape, if the silver is etched before contouring, then cracks
may appear in narrow tracks so the contour is etched first to
isolate the tracks from the remaining silver, thus preventing the
overheating of tracks during the etching of the substrate.
The contour lines are important in the process optimization
as they define the edge resolution. The hatch lines can have dif-
ferent parameter settings to the contour lines. The first thing to
check in optimization of these parameters is the laser absorp-
tion by the silver. The maximum writing speed of 1000 mm/s
was set to reduce the processing time with the pulse rate of 80
kHz that gives a pulse overlap of 12.5 m; even with the square
beam profile, a half beam diameter overlap is recommended to
avoid ragged edges. A straight line was etched in the silver and
the gap width was studied.
SHAFIQUE et al.: LASER PROTOTYPING OF MICROWAVE CIRCUITS IN LTCC TECHNOLOGY 3257

Fig. 4. SEM photograph of laser etched 100 m track with single contour line.

Fig. 3. Substrate damage around the contour line: (A) silver track itself;
(B) contour line; and (C) etched substrate region.

At a power of 6.7 W, the gap is 80 m wide, meaning that

the 25 m beam was creating the gap of 80 m. This absorption
should be reduced to achieve the smaller gaps. The power was
then reduced to 5.8 W to restrict the absorption to 50 m. At this
laser power, the silver was not removed completely, so the line
Fig. 5. Laser tracks: (A) single contour line and (B) double contour line.
was etched three times to ensure the complete removal of silver.
After three equal power contour cycles, the substrate underneath
the contour line was not affected much more than the remaining
area. This is shown in Fig. 3. An average of 5 m extra damage
was observed under the contour lines.
To properly remove the silver from the substrate surface, the
peel-off effect was targeted. A power of 5.9 W was used to peel
off the silver with a writing speed of 500 mm/s and pulse rate of
40 kHz. The remaining silver on the substrate was removed in a
second cycle by reducing the power to 5.2 W and increasing the
writing speed to 800 mm/s and the pulse repetition frequency
to 65 kHz, A third cycle at a power of 4.4 W may be added to
improve the smoothness of the etched substrate. Fig. 6. SEM photograph of laser etched 100 m track with double contour line.
The most challenging part of this phase is minimizing the heat
transfer to the conductor tracks. If the design has tracks of 50 m
width then they can be damaged easily by slight overheating from then the hatch lines were performed. This pushed the hatch lines
the hatch lines. If we observe Fig. 1, the hatch lines end on the further away from the track edge and reduced the unwanted heat
contour line on one side of the track and starts again on the other transfer to the track. This is shown in Fig. 5 for the corner detail
side. To avoid overheating the narrow tracks, the laser was turned of one of the designs. Fig. 6 shows an SEM photograph of a
off shortly before reaching the contour line, which left a few mi- 100 m track etched with two contour lines in this manner. The
crometers of unetched substrate. Similarly, on the other side the first contour line was kept 25 m away from the track edge and
laser was turned on at the hatch line with a short delay so that the second contour line was kept 40 m away from the track
the laser was few micrometers away from the contour line. The edge. The whole optimization process is summarized in Fig. 7.
silver on both sides that was not directly etched had, however,
gained sufficient energy from the beginning or end of the hatch V. SURFACE ROUGHNESS
line to peel itself off the substrate, thus leaving no silver behind.
This phenomenon is shown in Fig. 4, which is an SEM photo- The root mean square roughness (Rq) and center line average
graph of a fired sample with a 100 m conductor track; the ver- roughness (Ra) of an etched substrate and an unetched sub-
tical white lines drawn on the picture show the contour line and strate are shown in Figs. 8 and 9. The average roughness of the
the horizontal lines represent the hatch lines. The trench labeled etched substrate, when measured on different samples, varied
“A” is the etched region from the contour line and region “C” is from 98 to 113 nm. The average roughness of the unetched sub-
the etched region from the hatch lines. A small hump is visible strate varied from 61 to 86 nm. The surface roughness of screen
between the two regions, labeled region “B”; it represents the por- printed silver using 280 standard mesh screen on green tape was
tion that is not directly etched with the laser so the substrate is not found to be between 42 to 48 nm. A comparison of the surface
damaged but the silver is peeled off by absorbing sufficient heat. roughness of the three regions (A, B, C) is shown in Fig. 10,
Another technique to improve the edge resolution is to add an where region A is the unetched substrate, region B is the silver
extra contour line. The two contour lines were etched first and track, and region C is the etched substrate.
3258 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2009
Fig. 7. Flow diagram of laser etching process optimization.
Fig. 8. Surface roughness of laser etched substrate.
Fig. 9. Surface roughness of unetched substrate.
VI. MINIMUM TRACK RESOLUTION
Tracks of width 50, 60, 80, and 110 m were etched on green
tape. These samples when fired were shrunk down to 45, 55, 74,
and 100 m respectively. The gaps achieved with this technique
were as small as 50 and 70 m. These widths and gaps of fired
sample are shown in Fig. 11. The edges were cut with a resolu-
tion of 5 m as shown in Fig. 12.
Fig. 10. Roughness comparison of unetched, silver, and laser etched regions.
Fig. 11. SEM photograph of laser etched tracks and gaps.
Fig. 12. Edge resolution of laser etched tracks.
VII. MICROVIAS AND TRENCHES
Instead of applying repetitive laser pulses at one spot, the
vias were drilled with carefully-controlled repeated laser pulses
around the edges. Application of stationary laser pulses results
in conical vias which do not open completely on the exit side
when drilled in thick substrates. Instead, moving the laser
around the edges helps in making vias with a diameter smaller
than the thickness of substrate. The way the laser beam in the
Protolaser 200 is steered from one position to another across the
substrate means that the vias which are not directly underneath
the source are not cylindrical but slightly tilted. The degree of
tilt reduces when the diameter of the vias is equal to or greater
than the thickness of the substrate.
A careful optimization of the parameters is required for
making microvias. The writing speed was set to maximum and
the pulse rate was adjusted so that sufficient absorption was
SHAFIQUE et al.: LASER PROTOTYPING OF MICROWAVE CIRCUITS IN LTCC TECHNOLOGY 3259

Fig. 13. Laser entry side of 50 m via matrix with pitch of 100 m.
Fig. 15. Laser drilled trenches of different widths.

Fig. 14. Laser exit side of 50 m via matrix with pitch of 100 m.
Fig. 16. Band-stop mushroom resonator.

observed. The diameter of via was kept 25 m smaller than

the desired value to compensate the beam width of 25 m. The
nominal diameter of 50 m via resulted in 90 m because of
the high laser power. The laser power was reduce to minimize
the extra damage, only 5 m extra damage was noticed at a
power of 6.9 W, therefore a 30 m smaller via diameter resulted
in the desired via dimension. This power level resulted in the
required diameter but the vias were not drilled to the bottom
due to insufficient laser power. The compromise thus arose in
via depth and damage and was resolved by repeating the cycle.
It was observed that the substrate did not absorb the laser en-
ergy when the hole was drilled halfway. This is because the low Fig. 17. Simulated and measured response of mushroom resonator.
power laser beam was focused on the surface of the substrate. The
laser focus was thus assigned an extra offset equal to half of sub- nine cycles with an additional focus offset were used to make
strate thickness. The substrate started absorbing the laser energy trenches as narrow as 30 m. The trenches in unfired green
again. The 50 m vias were drilled in the 254 m substrate with a tape are shown in Fig. 15.
power of 6.9 W and seven cycles on the surface, followed by nine
cycles with an additional offset of 125 m. Due to high writing VIII. MICROWAVE CIRCUIT RESULTS
speed of 1000 mm/s, the vias were made very quickly. A matrix
of 50 m vias, with 100 m pitch, machined in unfired green tape The DuPont 943PX 254 m thick green tape with a relative
is shown in Fig. 13. The exit side of these vias is shown in Fig. 14. permittivity of 7.4 and loss tangent of 0.002 at 40 GHz was
The exit side diameter of the vias is 20 m smaller than the used to realize a band-stop mushroom resonator. This resonator
entry side. This difference can be reduced by using additional consists of a 50 microstrip line on the top layer. A square
laser cycles with an extra offset in focus position. pad on the second layer is connected to the ground with via.
The same technique was adopted to make the trenches This grounded pad makes a short circuit at resonant frequency
(grooves). The laser was marked around the edges of a rec- to create a bandstop resonator [23].
tangle to make a trench. If the trench is narrower than 100 m, CPW probing pads were added to permit accurate mea-
the substrate is ablated but with wider trenches a solid strip surement of the response. Ground-signal-ground probes with
comes off the substrate after laser processing. The trenches 250 m pitch were used with an Agilent Technologies E8361A
can be made smaller than 50 m by just marking the laser in PNA. A drawing of the resonator and the measured response
a single straight line instead of marking around a rectangle’s are shown in Figs. 16 and 17, respectively. The insertion loss
edges. Seven laser marking cycles on the surface followed by of this resonator was measured to be 0.83 dB at 8.18 GHz.
3260 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 57, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2009
the laser during the process. Arbitrary via shapes can be pro-
duced and trenches with a width smaller than 50 m have been
demonstrated by using lower power but repeated laser cycles
along a single straight contour line.
Fig. 18. Microstrip band-pass ring resonator filter.
Fig. 19. Simulated and measure response of microstrip ring resonator filter.
As a second circuit demonstrator, a low loss wideband mi-
crostrip ring resonator filter [24] was designed and fabricated.
This resonator consists of two orthogonal tuning stubs directly
connected to a microstrip ring; the length of these stubs defines
the pass-band width. An additional square stub at one corner
controls the dual-mode behavior, leading to increased stopband
width on both sides of the pass-band [24].
An extra two layers were added to improve the mechanical
stability of the manufactured device. SMA launchers were used
to connect the filter to the network analyzer. The resonator and
its measured and simulated responses are shown in Figs. 18 and
19, respectively. The measured mid-band insertion loss from
3.95 to 6.63 GHz is 0.18 dB.
IX. CONCLUSION
It is concluded that rapid LTCC circuit prototyping is pos-
sible with direct laser machining on unfired green tape. Com-
pared to conventional methods, this technique is efficient for the
prototyping of multilayer circuits as it does not require multiple
screens or masks. Designs can be changed very quickly for re-
search and development purposes. However, considerable op-
timization of the processing parameters is required in order to
successfully etch conductor patterns on the unfired green tape.
Track widths and gaps of 50 m are realizable with good re-
peatability and an edge resolution of 5 m.
A via diameter and spacing of 50 m is achievable by con-
trolled laser marking around the edges of vias and by refocusing
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M. Farhan Shafique (S’08) received the B.Eng. de-
gree from Hamdard University, Hamdard, Pakistan,
in 2003, and the M.S. degree from University of
Paris East Marne-La-Vallée, Paris, France, in 2005.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
electronic and communications engineering from
The University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K.
His research interests involve multilayered-mi-
crowave device fabrication on LTCC and thick-film
technology, electromagnetic modeling of microwave
structures, and RF antenna design. In 2005, he was
an intern at Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France, where he
was involved in the study of blind frequency and phase estimation in short radio
burst. From 2005 to 2007, he was a Research Assistant with the COMSATS
Institute of Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Kashif Saeed (S’06–M’08) received the B.Eng.
(with honors, first class), M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees
in electronic and communications engineering from
The University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K., in 2002, 2004,
and 2008, respectively.
He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Re-
search Associate with the Institute of Microwave
and Photonics, School of Electronic and Electrical
Engineering, The University of Leeds, where he is
currently involved in the study of low-dimensional
electronic systems at microwave frequencies. In
2007, he was a Summer Intern with Agilent Technologies, where he was in-
volved in the design and application of microwave biosensors in microfluidics.
His research interests include the area of high-frequency material characteri-
zation and microwave circuit design and miniaturization techniques on LTCC
and thick-film technology.
Dr. Saeed was a recipient of the 2002 U.K. and RI IEEE Communications
Chapter Prize for the best project in the area of telecommunications.
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David Paul Steenson (M’96–SM’00) was born
in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1963. He received
the B.Sc. degree (with honors) in electronics and
electrical engineering from the University of Man-
chester, Manchester, U.K., in 1984, and the Ph.D.
degree in physics from the University of Nottingham,
Nottingham, U.K., in 1993.
In 1984, he joined Philips Components, Cheshire,
U.K., where he was a Microwave Device Develop-
ment Engineer, and in 1986, he moved to Philips Re-
search Laboratories, Surrey, U.K., where he was in-
volved with the manufacture, design, and characterization of high-frequency
devices in germanium, silicon, and gallium arsenide. In 1989, he joined the De-
partment of Physics, University of Nottingham, where he was involved in the
area of high frequency applications of double barrier resonant tunnelling de-
vices (DBRTDs). In 1993, he joined the Department of Electronic and Elec-
trical Engineering, The University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K., as a Research Assis-
tant and continued his research on high-frequency applications of DBRTDs. In
1994, he became a permanent member of the Microwave and Terahertz Tech-
nology Group (later becoming the Institute of Microwaves and Photonics), at
The University of Leeds, and more recently he has supervised the construction
and equipping of the Wolfson Nanotechnology Cleanroom, Leeds, U.K. His re-
search interests are mainly in the field of micro-fabrication and integration of
novel millimeter- and submillimeter-wave devices and circuits.
Dr. Steenson is a member of the Institute of Physics and the Institute of En-
gineering and Technology, U.K.
Ian D. Robertson (M’96–SM’05) was born in
London, U.K., in 1963. He received the B.Sc. (Eng.)
and Ph.D. degrees from King’s College London,
London, U.K., in 1984 and 1990, respectively.
From 1984 to 1986, he worked with the MMIC Re-
search Group, Plessey Research, Caswell, U.K. After
that he returned to King’s College London, initially
as a Research Assistant and then as a Lecturer, finally
becoming Reader in 1994. In 1998, he was appointed
Professor of Microwave Subsystems Engineering at
the University of Surrey, where he established the Mi-
crowave Systems Research Group and was a founder member of the Advanced
Technology Institute. He has organized many colloquia, workshops, and short
courses for both the IEE and IEEE. He edited the book MMIC Design (IEE,
1995) and coedited the book RFIC & MMIC Design and Technology, (The In-
stitute of Electrical Engineering, 2001). He has published over 380 papers in the
areas of MIC and MMIC design.
Dr. Roberson was the Honorary Editor of IEE Proceedings—Microwaves,
Antennas & Propagation for many years and Editor-in-Chief of the rebranded
IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation from 2005 to 2009. In June 2004,
he was appointed to the University of Leeds Centenary Chair in Microwave and
Millimeter-Wave Circuits.