Improvements to performance of spiral inductors on insulators

Author

Kelly, D. ; Wright, F.

Author_Institution

Peregrine Semicond. Corp., San Diego, CA, USA

fYear

2002

fDate

3-4 June 2002

Firstpage

431

Lastpage

433

Abstract

The performance of spiral inductors on insulating substrates is far superior to ones fabricated in bulk CMOS or BiCMOS processes. In spite of this, SOI inductors are generally not satisfactory for very low noise or low insertion loss circuits. This work studies high frequency effects on current density In Inductors and discusses improvements In metallization and layout. Based on this research, a 5.5 nH inductor has been fabricated on sapphire with a 540 /spl mu/m diameter and 4.5 /spl mu/m thick aluminum, resulting in a quality factor of 25 at 2 GHz.

Keywords

Q-factor; UHF integrated circuits; aluminium; current density; inductors; integrated circuit metallisation; sapphire; silicon-on-insulator; skin effect; substrates; 2 GHz; 270 micron; 4.5 micron; Al metallization; Al-Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/; Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/; RFICs; Si; current density; high frequency effects; insulating substrates; layout improvement; metallization improvement; proximity effect current crowding; sapphire; self-inductance; skin effect; spiral inductors; BiCMOS integrated circuits; CMOS process; Circuit noise; Current density; Frequency; Inductors; Insertion loss; Insulation; Metallization; Spirals;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, 2002 IEEE

Conference_Location

Seattle, WA, USA

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7246-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2002.1012084

Filename

1012084