Title :
Experimental analysis of the effect of metal thickness on the quality factor in integrated spiral inductors for RF ICs
Author :
Yun-Seok Choi ; Jun-Bo Yoon
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Korea Adv. Inst. of Sci. & Technol., Daejeon, South Korea
Abstract :
The effect of metal thickness on the quality (Q-) factor of the integrated spiral inductor is investigated in this paper. The inductors with metal thicknesses of 5/spl sim/22.5 μm were fabricated on the standard silicon substrate of 1/spl sim/30 /spl Omega//spl middot/cm in resistivity by using thick-metal surface micromachining technology. The fabricated inductors were measured at GHz ranges to extract their major parameters (Q-factor, inductance, and resistance). From the experimental analysis assisted by FEM simulation, we first reported that the metal thickness´ effect on the Q-factor strongly depends on the innermost turn diameter of the spiral inductor, so that it is possible to improve Q-factors further by increasing the metal thickness beyond 10 μm.
Keywords :
Q-factor; micromachining; radiofrequency integrated circuits; silicon compounds; substrates; thick film inductors; FEM simulation; RF ICs; RF MEMS; experimental analysis; inductance; integrated micromachined inductor; integrated spiral inductors; metal thickness; quality factor; radio frequency; resistance; resistivity; silicon substrate; thick-metal surface micromachining; Conductivity; Electrical resistance measurement; Inductance measurement; Inductors; Micromachining; Q factor; Radio frequency; Silicon; Spirals; Surface resistance;
Journal_Title :
Electron Device Letters, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/LED.2003.822652
