Self-assembling MEMS variable and fixed RF inductors

Author

Lubecke, V.M. ; Barber, B. ; Chan, E. ; Lopez, D. ; Gammel, P.

Author_Institution

Bell Labs. Lucent Technol. Inc., Murray Hill, NJ, USA

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

201

Lastpage

204

Abstract

Inductors play a key role in wireless front-end circuitry, yet are not generally well suited for conventional RF integrated circuit fabrication processes. We have developed inductors that can be fabricated on a conventional RFIC silicon substrate, which use warping members to assemble themselves away from the substrate to improve quality factor (Q) and self-resonance frequency (SRF), and to provide a degree of variation in inductance value. These self-assembling variable inductors are realized through foundry provided microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) processing, and have demonstrated temperature stable Q values greater than 13, SRF values well above 15 GHz, and inductance variations greater than 18%. Simulations suggest that optimized processing should yield Q values above 20 and inductance variations greater than 30%

Keywords

Q-factor; inductors; micromechanical devices; self-assembly; 15 GHz; RF inductor; RF integrated circuit fabrication; Si; inductance; microelectromechanical system; quality factor; self-assembly; self-resonance frequency; silicon substrate; warping member; wireless front-end circuit; Assembly; Fabrication; Foundries; Inductance; Inductors; Micromechanical devices; Q factor; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency integrated circuits; Silicon;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Conference, 2000 Asia-Pacific

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6435-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/APMC.2000.925762

Filename

925762