Influence of metal layer thickness of spiral inductors on the quality factor by 3-D EM simulation

Author

Lin Shiwei ; Guo Lihui

Author_Institution

Inst. of Microelectron., Singapore, Singapore

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

21-24 Oct. 2003

Firstpage

1117

Abstract

The influence of the inductor thickness on the Q factor has been analyzed in detail by the 3-D electromagnetic simulator HFSS. For spiral inductors based on the CMOS compatible Cu/SiO₂ interconnect technology, the improvement of the Q factor can be realized by increasing the metal layer thickness due to the decrease of the series resistance. However, such improvement of the Q factor becomes slender as the thickness over a certain value because of the skin effect and proximity effect. Considering both the effectiveness of improving Q by increasing the thickness and the process challenge to state-of-the-art CMOS technology, we recommend that the reasonable thickness of the interconnect top-metal-layer for inductors can be set to be from 4 μm to 6μm.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; Q-factor; circuit simulation; inductors; integrated circuit interconnections; proximity effect (lithography); skin effect; 3-D EM simulation; 3-D electromagnetic simulator; 4 to 6 microns; CMOS compatible; CMOS technology; HFSS; Q factor; interconnect technology; interconnect top-metal-layer; metal layer thickness; proximity effect; quality factor; series resistance; skin effect; spiral inductors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

ASIC, 2003. Proceedings. 5th International Conference on

ISSN

1523-553X

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7889-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICASIC.2003.1277409

Filename

1277409