Thermally Insulating Millimeter-Wave Interconnects for Scalable Cryogenic Systems

ABSTRACT

Future emerging applications like extreme environment electronics, high-performance and quantum computing, and space communication/sensing interfaces share a critical goal: massive bandwidth and deployment scalability. Among the applications mentioned above, this talk focuses on the current practices of cryogenic interconnects and their limitations and then discusses new avenues to scale the interconnects in future cryogenic systems. In the first part, I will discuss wireless data transmission between cryogenically-cooled 150 GHz CMOS transmitter and room temperature receiver to demonstrate the feasibility of thermally-loaded coaxial cables. I will highlight custom-designed mm-wave packaging and on-chip signal processing techniques to enable such data link at cryogenic temperatures. In the second, I will discuss new types of millimeter-wave wires to scale signal bandwidth while isolating thermal conduction between inter-temperature cold plates in cryogenic systems. Lastly, as part of the extreme environment research stream, I will briefly elaborate other research activities in high-temperature electronics and space-based sensing.

BIOGRAPHY

Rod Kim graduated from UCLA with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Before that, he was an assistant professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. His research group focuses on extreme environment electronics, including low-temperature, high-temperature, and radiative environments. Rod received an NSF CAREER Award in 2025 and a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2022. He has been an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques since 2022 and a track editor for the IEEE Journal of Microwaves since 2025.