Realization of three-dimensional solenoidal microcoils with air core in low temperature co-fired ceramics technology

A novel microcoil design employing an exquisite feature of low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) technology - a multilayered structures fabrication - is presented in this work. The intended purpose of the microcoils is their efficient implementation in a system for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Sub-millimeter dimensions, cylindrical shape, low resistance, high self-resonant frequency of the microcoil are crucial for the efficiency of NMR experiments. The microcoils have air-filled quasi-solenoidal shape where every layer of LTCC tape accommodates one half of the microcoil´s winding, 12 windings in total. After the fabrication, 32 test samples with different sizes were characterized with a vector network analyzer, providing measurement results in terms of inductance and self-resonant frequency.