Novel USB Type-C receptacle connector with ceramic insulator and three-layer ground plates

This paper proposes a novel USB Type-C receptacle connector with a ceramic insulator and three-layer ground plates. In the conventional manufacturing method involving injection molding process, multi-layer ground plates cannot be realized, and a single ground plate must include open areas for injection molding fixation and silicone potting. The defected metal ground plate may leak RFI. Hybrid Integrated circuit (HIC) processes and high-temperature co-fired ceramic (HTCC) technology used in this work enable the implementation of three metal plates and the use of ceramics. The three metal plates result in a reduction of RFI by up to 4.7 dB for RX1 and 10 dB for TX1 across the frequency range of 0.5 to 3 GHz compared with the commercial USB Type-C receptacle connector. The use of alumina ceramic demonstrated excellent reliability, with the extraction force measured at 1.82 kg·f initially and 1.78 kg·f after 20,000 cycles of insertion and extraction.