Thermal Issues in Micromachined Spiral Inductors for High-Power Applications

Author

Sagkol, Huseyin ; Rejaei, Behzad ; Burghartz, Joachim N.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Math. & Comput. Sci., Delft Univ. of Technol., Delft

Volume

55

Issue

11

fYear

2008

Firstpage

3288

Lastpage

3294

Abstract

An experimental study of the self-heating of micromachined spiral inductors operated under high-power conditions is presented. Typical suspended spiral coils are shown to develop highly elevated temperatures (up to several hundred degrees) under the flow of a moderate to high (> 60 mA) dc current, which often applies to inductors in radio frequency power circuits. This can lead to the degradation of quality factor and even device failure. The role of various heat dissipation mechanisms relevant for a suspended coil is discussed and analyzed by means of experiments and thermal simulations. Possible solutions to the self-heating issue are discussed and experimentally demonstrated.

Keywords

Q-factor; micromachining; power inductors; heat dissipation mechanisms; high-power applications; micromachined spiral inductors; micromachining; quality factor; radio frequency power circuits; self-heating; suspended spiral coils; thermal issues; Circuits; Coils; Dielectric substrates; Inductors; Micromachining; Q factor; Radio frequency; Silicon; Spirals; Temperature; Micromachining; microwave circuits; passives; self-heating; spiral inductor;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2008.2005127

Filename

4668568