Rotational Driven RF Variable Capacitors With Post-CMOS Processes

A ring-shaped on-chip tunable capacitor is proposed and fabricated with CMOS-compatible micromachining processes for radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). The rotationally driven variable capacitor features a much higher axial mechanical stiffness compared to its conventional straight-line-driven counterpart, and therefore, can effectively depress the instability caused by environmental vibration when the varactor is used in mobile systems. Meanwhile, the rotationally driven intedigitated capacitor is designed to be very flexible for wide range of electrostatic tuning. Near-room-temperature micromachining techniques are developed for post-CMOS integrating the tunable capacitors into RFIC chips. The fabricated varactor is measured with a tuning ratio of 2.1:1 under an actuation of 12 V. Q-factor is measured as 51.3 at 1 GHz and 35.2 at 2 GHz, while self-resonance frequency is as high as 9.5 GHz. The rotationally driven tunable capacitor shows about two orders of magnitude higher antivibration capability compared to the conventional straight-driven one. Therefore, the high-performance CMOS-compatible tunable capacitors are promising for practical RFIC applications in mobile electronic telecom systems.     

双层悬空结构射频微电感制作研究

利用MEMS工艺制作了一种双层悬空结构的圆形射频微电感,研究了双层结构微电感中微带线宽度对其性能的影响。研究表明,双层悬空结构的圆形射频微电感不仅具有较大的电感量,而且其Q值也较高;双层微电感的Q值随微带线宽度的增大而升高,而电感量则随微带线宽度的增大而降低。对于微带线宽度为60μm的双层微电感,在频率2～4GHz时,其电感量可达到5nH左右,Q值达到20。     

Design issues for monolithic DC-DC converters

This paper presents various ideas for integrating different components of dc-dc converter on to a silicon chip. These converters are intended to process power levels up to 0.5W. Techniques for integrating capacitors and design issues for MOS transistors are discussed. The most complicated design issue involves inductors. Expressions for trace resistance and inductance estimation of on-chip planar spiral inductor on top metal layer of CMOS process are compared. These inductors have high series resistance due to low metal trace thickness, capacitive coupling with substrate and other metal traces, and eddy current loss. As an alternative, a CMOS compatible three-dimensional (3-D) surface micromachining technology known as plastic deformation magnetic assembly (PDMA) is used to fabricate high quality inductors with small footprints. Experimental results from a monolithic buck converter using this PDMA inductor are presented. A major conclusion of this work is that the 3-D "post-process" technology is more viable than traditional integrated circuit assembly methods for realizing of micro-power converters.     

Flip chip assembled MEMS inductors

High performance suspended MEMS inductors produced using a flip chip assembly approach are described. An inductor structure is fabricated on a carrier and then flip chip assembled onto a substrate to form a suspended inductor for RF-IC applications with significant improvement in Q-factor and frequency of operation over the conventional IC inductors. A spiral MEMS inductor has been successfully produced on a silicon substrate with an air gap of 26 /spl mu/m between the inductor structure and the substrate. The inductance of the device was measured to be /spl sim/2 nH and a maximum Q-factor of 19 at /spl sim/2.5 GHz was obtained after pad/connector de-embedding.     

MEMS-Based Tunable LC Bandstop Filter With an Ultra-Wide Continuous Tuning Range

This letter presents a new microelectromechanical system-based tunable LC filter that utilizes a tunable capacitor and a tunable inductor in a single device. An electrically floating metal plate is located between the tunable capacitor and the tunable inductor. As the floating metal plate is thermally moved and used commonly for both the capacitor and inductor, the device provides an ultra-wide continuous frequency tuning range by a simultaneous increase or decrease of the capacitance and inductance. The fabricated tunable LC filter showed a continuous frequency tuning ratio in excess of 127% in a range of 8.8 GHz to more than 20 GHz.      

Packaging-compatible high Q microinductors and microfilters forwireless applications

To meet requirements in mobile communication and microwave integrated circuits, miniaturization of the inductive components that many of these systems require is of key importance. At present, active circuitry is used which simulates inductor performance and which has high Q-factor and inductance; however, such circuitry has higher power consumption and higher potential for noise injection than passive inductive components. An alternate approach is to fabricate integrated inductors, in which lithographic techniques are used to pattern an inductor directly on a substrate or a chip. However, integrated inductors can suffer from low Q-factor and high parasitic effects due to substrate proximity. To expand the range of applicability of integrated microinductors at high frequency, their electrical characteristics, especially quality factor, should be improved. In this work, integrated spiral microinductors suspended (approximately 60 μm) above the substrate using surface micromachining techniques to reduce the undesirable effect of substrate proximity on the inductor performance are investigated. The fabricated inductors have inductances ranging from 15-40 nH and Q-factors ranging from 40-50 at frequencies of 0.9-2.5 GHz. Microfilters based on these inductors are also investigated by combining these inductors with integrated polymer filled composite capacitors     

Temperature and Substrate Effects in Monolithic RF Inductors on Silicon With 6-$muhboxm$-Thick Top Metal for RFIC Applications

Comprehensive analyses of the effects of temperature (from$-hbox50 ^circhboxC$to 200$^circhboxC$), silicon substrate thickness, and proton implantation postprocess on the performances of a set of planar spiral inductors with 6-$muhboxm$-thick top metal are demonstrated. Quality-factor (Q-factor) and power gain$( G_ A)$decrease with increasing temperatures but show a reverse behavior within a higher frequency range. Stability-factor (K-factor) and noise figure (NF) increase with increasing temperatures but show a reverse behavior within a higher frequency range. The reverse frequencies$f_R$, which correspond to the zero temperature coefficient of$G_A$, K-factor, and NF, are almost the same. In addition, both the silicon substrate thinning and proton implantation are verified to be effective in improving the Q-factor and NF performances of inductors on silicon. The present analyses enable RF engineers to understand more deeply the Q-factor and NF behavior of inductors fabricated on a thin silicon substrate (20$muhboxm$) and hence are helpful for them to design high-performance fully on-chip low-noise-amplifiers and other RF integrated circuits.     

A Wide Tuning-Range CMOS VCO With a Differential Tunable Active Inductor

By utilizing a differential tunable active inductor for the LC-tank, a wide tuning-range CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is presented. In the proposed circuit topology, the coarse frequency tuning is achieved by the tunable active inductor, while the fine tuning is controlled by the varactor. Using a 0.18-$muhbox m$CMOS process, a prototype VCO is implemented for demonstration. The fabricated circuit provides an output frequency from 500 MHz to 3.0 GHz, resulting in a tuning range of 143% at radio frequencies. The measured phase noise is from$-$101 to$-$118 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset within the entire frequency range. Due to the absence of the spiral inductors, the fully integrated VCO occupies an active area of$hbox 150times hbox 300 muhbox m^2$.     

Air Cavity Incorporation to LTCC Spiral Inductor for High Q-factor and SRF

We have devised a new LTCC spiral inductor incorporating an air cavity underneath for high Q-factor and high self-resonant frequency (SRF). The air cavity employed under the spiral reduces the shunt capacitance of the inductor, and results in high Q-factor and SRF of the embedded inductors. The optimized spiral inductor with the embedded air cavity shows a maximum Q of 51 and SRF of 9.1 GHz, while conventional spiral inductor has a maximum Q of 43 and SRF of 8 GHz with effective inductance of 2.7 nH.     

宽范围可调MEMS集成滤波器的设计与制作

基于MEMS平面螺旋电感和MEMS可调平行板电容设计并制作了一种宽可调范围的集成可调带通滤波器。理论分析并计算了可调滤波器电感和可调电容的取值范围,利用HFSS设计得到各元件结构参数,并使用AnsoftDesigner分析软件对可调滤波器电路进行了模拟仿真。设计得到的可调滤波器中心频率调节范围为400～700MHz,可调率达75%,实现了宽范围可调,3dB相对带宽范围为5%～10%,插入损耗小于5dB,芯片尺寸为20mm×6mm×0.4mm。给出了一套基于MEMS平面工艺的MEMS集成可调滤波器的制作流程,实现了MEMS集成可调滤波器的工艺制作及测试。测试结果表明,获得的可调滤波器实现了通带频率宽范围可调。     

Tunable MEMS Spiral Inductors With Optimized RF Performance and Integrated Large-Displacement Electrothermal Actuators

We propose a tunable microelectromechanical systems integrated inductor with a large-displacement electrothermal actuator. Based on a transformer configuration, the inductance of a spiral inductor is tuned by controlling the relative position of a magnetically coupled short-circuited loop. The magnetic coupling between the inductors can be changed from 0.17 to 0.8 through an electrothermal actuator that can change their relative position by over 140 mum . For the first time, we investigate the impact of this tuning scheme on the inductance and quality factor and propose optimal designs. While a previous preliminary study has focused on keeping the ratio between the two coupled inductors close to one, we find that optimal performance is a weak function of this ratio. Instead, it primarily depends on the resistive loss of the short-circuited coil. Our theoretical studies are backed by a variety of fabricated and measured tunable inductors that show a ~2:1 inductance tuning ratio over a wide frequency range of approximately 25 GHz. In addition, the maximum and minimum quality factors of the tunable inductor are measured to be 26 and 10, respectively, which agree well with the theoretically expected values.     

LC-VCOs using spiral inductors with single- and dual-layer patterned floating shields: a comparative study

This letter studies and compares class-B VCOs using spiral inductors with the proposed dual-layer patterned floating shield (DL-PFS) and conventional single-layer patterned floating shield (SL-PFS). The proposed DL-PFS technique utilizes two lowest metal layers to effectively reduce the capacitive induced current to the substrate in an on-chip spiral inductor, thereby boosts its Q-factor by 40% when compared with the conventional SL-PFS approach. We fabricated, as a proof of concept, the class-B LC-VCOs using the DL-PFS and SL-PFS in 0.13 µm CMOS. Operating at 10 GHz, the VCO with the DL-PFS inductor measures a 3.6 dB phase noise (PN) improvement at the same power consumption of 2.12 mW. Specifically, the VCO with DL-PFS inductor is tunable from 9.3-to-10.1 GHz and measured PN at 10 GHz is ?132.5 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset while consuming 2.12 mW at the lowest 0.6 V supply. The achieved figure-of-merit (187.4 dBc/Hz@1 MHz offset) compares favorably with the recent state-of-the-art.     

新颖的常规硅工艺实现的侧向螺线型片上集成电感

提出了一种用常规硅工艺实现的片上集成电感的螺线型新结构．制造工艺使用标准双层金属布线的常规硅工艺．测量了螺线型集成电感的S参数，从测量数据计算了集成电感的参量．实验的侧向螺线型片上集成电感的Q值峰值为1.3，电感量为22nH．对用两层金属层实现的侧向螺线型片上集成电感和单层金属的常规平面螺旋电感的实验结果进行了比较，电感量和Q值与常规平面螺旋电感有可比性．     

Development of RF/microwave on-chip inductors using an organic micromachining process

The design and development of a micromachined spiral inductor using an organic micromachining process are presented. The process utilizes an ultra-thick negative photoresist SU-8 to elevate an inductor structure above a substrate. The micromachined inductors have been designed and fabricated on solid and hollow ground planes to, investigate the feasibility for achieving high Q-factors. The experimental results demonstrate that a micromachined inductor integrated on a Si substrate achieves a Q-factor of 19.3 at 2.1 GHz.     

Q-factor definition and evaluation for spiral inductors fabricated using wafer-level CSP technology

A novel Q-factor definition and evaluation method are proposed for low-loss high-Q spiral inductors fabricated by using the wafer-level chip-size package (WLP) on silicon substrates, where the copper wiring technology with a polyimide isolation layer is used. In conventional Q-factor evaluation for inductors, a short-circuited load condition is used, where the Q factor is represented by using Y-parameters as Q=Im{1/Y/sub 11/}/Re{1/Y/sub 11/}. This conventional method provides a Q factor of 20 with 2-5-nH inductance around 3.9 GHz. However, since structures for the spiral inductors are asymmetrical, the short-circuited load condition and short-circuited source condition give different Q values, respectively. The Q-value differences of approximately 100% have often been observed in the WLP. The differences mainly come from differences in loss estimation. In a novel method, a complex conjugate impedance-matching condition is retained both at an input port and an output port of the inductor. The maximum available power gain (G/sub AMAX/) is introduced to evaluate the energy loss in one cycle. This condition provides a unique insertion loss of passive devices. Thus, the difference of the Q factor depends only on the difference of magnetic and electric energy. The difference of the Q value is reduced.     

Experimental analysis of the effect of metal thickness on the quality factor in integrated spiral inductors for RF ICs

The effect of metal thickness on the quality (Q-) factor of the integrated spiral inductor is investigated in this paper. The inductors with metal thicknesses of 5/spl sim/22.5 /spl mu/m were fabricated on the standard silicon substrate of 1/spl sim/30 /spl Omega//spl middot/cm in resistivity by using thick-metal surface micromachining technology. The fabricated inductors were measured at GHz ranges to extract their major parameters (Q-factor, inductance, and resistance). From the experimental analysis assisted by FEM simulation, we first reported that the metal thickness' effect on the Q-factor strongly depends on the innermost turn diameter of the spiral inductor, so that it is possible to improve Q-factors further by increasing the metal thickness beyond 10 /spl mu/m.     

新颖的常规硅工艺实现的侧向螺线型片上集成电感

提出了一种用常规硅工艺实现的片上集成电感的螺线型新结构．制造工艺使用标准双层金属布线的常规硅工艺．测量了螺线型集成电感的S参数，从测量数据计算了集成电感的参量．实验的侧向螺线型片上集成电感的Q值峰值为1.3，电感量为22nH．对用两层金属层实现的侧向螺线型片上集成电感和单层金属的常规平面螺旋电感的实验结果进行了比较，电感量和Q值与常规平面螺旋电感有可比性．     

RF MEMS电感的研究与进展

无线通信的迅速发展,对高性能电感有迫切的需要。本文介绍了目前电感的发展状况,包括表面螺旋电感、垂直平面螺旋电感、悬浮螺旋电感和螺线管电感。对各种电感的性能进行了比较,讨论了电感设计所需考虑的问题及相关因素,对各种电感的加工工艺作了介绍。总结了各种电感的品种因数。     

A 1.9-GHz CMOS VCO with micromachined electromechanically tunablecapacitors

This paper presents a 1.9-GHz CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) where the resonant circuit consists of micromachined electromechnically tunable capacitors and a bonding wire inductor. The tunable capacitors were implemented in a MUMP's polysilicon surface micromachining process. These devices have a nominal capacitance of 2.1 pF and a quality factor (Q-factor) of 9.3 at 1.9 GHz. The capacitance is variable from 2.1 pF to 2.9 pF within a 4-V control, voltage range. The active circuits were fabricated in a 0.5-μm CMOS process. The VCO was assembled in a ceramic package where the MUMP's and CMOS dice were bonded together. The experimental VCO achieves a phase noise of -98 dBc/Hz and -126 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz and 600 kHz offsets from the carrier, respectively. The tuning range of the VCO is 9%. The VCO circuit and the output buffer consume 15 mW and 30 mW from a 2.7-V power supply, respectively     

An wide-range tunable on-chip radio-frequency LC-tank formed with a post-CMOS-compatible MEMS fabrication technique

An on-chip-micromachined tunable LC-tank, which consists of a metal inter-digitated variable capacitor and a metal solenoid inductor, is developed for wide-range radio-frequency (RF) tuning in multi-GHz band. A low-temperature metal MEMS process is developed to on-chip fabricate the passives. The process can be used for post-CMOS-compatible integration with RF ICs. Both the varactor and the inductor are suspended with a gap from the low-resistivity silicon wafer (i.e. standard CMOS wafer) for effectively depressing RF loss. The fabricated variable capacitor part, the inductor part and the whole tunable LC resonator are sequentially tested, finally resulting in a wide resonance-frequency tuning range of 72% (between about 3.5 and 6.0 GHz) under a low tuning voltage range of 0-4 V, while the Q-factor ranged within 23 and 8.