What are these mysterious structures on wireless chipsets?

[Andy Resnick]

Careful decapsulation of wireless chipsets results in these structures:

http://imageshack.us/a/img690/7145/9yd4.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img854/7783/kq3i.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img850/3041/xxki.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img826/2589/easq.jpg

I'm hoping someone can provide clues/insight as to what these are. The substrate material is likely glass (SiO2), about as thick as a MEMS cantilever, and are generally not top layers of a 'standard' Silicon IC- they are stand-alone planar structures connected to a ground plane (not shown).

Thanks in advance...

 

[f95toli]

Difficult to tell.
The structure on the 3rd picture is a (or perhaps more than one ) interdigital capacitor. At the bottom of the 4th image I can also see a spiral inductor.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Right- I can recognize certain circuit elements from similar features on silicon RF ICs. On those silicon ICs tho, the coils etc. are just the top layer. These aren't capacitatively (is that a word?) coupled to anything- it's truly a planar circuit.

Never mind the manufacturing magic needed to fabricate a zillion of these every second...