Low temperature variable inductor using Porous Anodic Alumina

Author

Oogarah, T.B. ; Daneshmand, M. ; Mansour, R.R. ; Chang, S.

Author_Institution

Centre for Integrated RF Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

fYear

2008

fDate

15-20 June 2008

Firstpage

1055

Lastpage

1058

Abstract

We propose a novel RF MEMS tunable inductor that is fabricated at a very low temperature of 80degC making this an excellent candidate for integration with RF ICs. The inductor is made of trilayer of aluminium-porous anodic alumina (PAA)-aluminium that can be thermally actuated and tuned. The measured wide tuning range of 25% is achieved for the inductor variation of 6.1 nH to 7.8 nH at 2 GHz. PAA is a novel low cost and low temperature dielectric material that can be easily tuned and integrated with RFIC or MEMS process. To our knowledge, this is the first time this material has been proposed and successfully used as a structural material for MEMS devices and CMOS processes.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; UHF integrated circuits; aluminium; dielectric materials; inductors; micromechanical devices; Al; CMOS processes; RF IC; RF MEMS tunable inductor; frequency 2 GHz; low temperature dielectric material; low temperature variable inductor; porous anodic alumina; temperature 80 degC; wide tuning range; Costs; Dielectric materials; Dielectric measurements; Inductors; Microelectromechanical devices; Micromechanical devices; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency integrated circuits; Radiofrequency microelectromechanical systems; Temperature; CMOS; Inductors; RF MEMS; inductors; microelectromechanical devices; microwave devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 2008 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Atlanta, GA

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1780-3

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2008.4633017

Filename

4633017