A Suspended MEMS inductor of a new geometry and a novel anchor for RF applications

Recently, suspended MEMS inductors have received a lot of attention from the research community. These inductors achieve high quality factors (above 15) and high self resonance frequency (above 10 GHz) in RF and Microwave bands. Designers of these inductors usually resort to using thick conductors to reduce series resistance, and bulk micromachining (DRIE, LIGA and others) to achieve higher inductor suspension heights to minimize substrate parasitic. Fabrication simplicity, albeit limiting in performance terms rests an attractive feature in an economical and integration sense. The purpose of this work is to present and explore a novel anchor configuration with a new geometry of planar inductor, and to demonstrate experimentally the possibility to have high quality factor and high self resonance frequency inductors using simple surface micromachining techniques.