TSINGHUA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ISSNll1007-0214ll09/12llpp78-83 Volume 17, Number 1, February 2012

Design of Magnetic RF Inductor in CMOS*

Jing Zhan1, Tianling Ren1,**, Chen Yang2, Yi Yang1, Litian Liu1, Albert Wang3
1. Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 2. Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Shanghai 200050, China; 3. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA Abstract: Traditional planar inductors in Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits (ICs) are plagued by large areas, low quality, and low frequencies. This paper describes a magnetic-based CMOS-compatible RF inductor. Magnetic-core inductors with various ferrite-filled structures, spiral structures, and magnetic material permeabilities were simulated to show that this inductor greatly improves the inductance by up to 97% and quality factor by 18.6% over a multi-GHz frequency range. The results indicate that the inductor is a very promising and viable solution to realize miniature, high quality, and high frequency on-chip inductors for high-end RF ICs. Key words: inductor; ferrite; magnetic-cored; Radio Frequency (RF); Integrated Circuits (ICs)

Introduction
On-chip inductors are the most significant elements in Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits (ICs). While RF ICs have scaled down with Moores law, the traditional planar spiral inductor in high-end RF ICs has two major shortcomings of large chip areas and low quality (Q) factors, due to the poor inductance scaling with the number of planar spiral turns and the large losses of various parasitic effects such as eddy current losses, skin effects, and proximity effects. Despite numerous efforts to create special substrates for low losses[1,2], stacked structures for small areas[3-5], and 3-dimentional (3-D) inductors using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) techniques to reduce
Received: 2011-05-10; revised: 2011-06-13

parasitic losses[6-9], the results have not simultaneously improved both the size and Q, and are expensive. However, discrete inductors in the megahertz range using soft ferrite have improved both the inductance, L, and Q. Therefore, on-chip RF inductors are being developed with integrated magnetic material in an effort to improve inductor performance and reduce inductor size. Recent work suggests that integrated soft ferromagnetic films may improve the performance of inductors[10,11]. Earlier works have shown that singlespiral inductors with underlying or coated soft ferrites can improve both L and Q[12-15].

1 Inductor Structure and Circuit Model

1.1 Magnetic-core vertically stacked-spiral inductor structure

** Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China

(Nos. 61025021, 60936002, 60729308, 61011130296, and 61020106006) and the National Key Projects of Science and Technology of China (No. 2009ZX02023-001-3)

** To whom correspondence should be addressed.

E-mail: RenTL@tsinghua.edu.cn; Tel: 86-10-62782712

The CMOS magnetic-core vertically-stacked spiral inductor is shown in Fig. 1. A differential spiral layout is used for low capacitance. The lateral bars shown in Figs. 1a and 1b were inserted into the dielectrics to

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The difficulties are the inaccuracy of the extracted model parameters due to the complexity of the magnetic material behavior at high frequency and the inaccuracies of high frequency measurements. This paper describes a two-port -type equivalent circuit model for the ferrite-core inductor as shown in Fig. 2. The widely used circuit model for air-core inductor in Fig. 2a[4] was modified to develop a circuit model for the ferrite-core inductor shown in Fig. 2b, where Lm, Rm, Cmlap, Cm1, Cm2, and Cm3 express the physical effects induced by the ferrite. Lm is defined as the additional ferrite-induced inductance to the coil series inductance, Ls. Rm is the ferrite-induced equivalent resistance added to the series resistance, Rs. Cmlap is the change in the capacitance overlap between the central

Fig. 1 Magnetic-core vertically stacked-spiral inductor in CMOS: (a) 3-D vertically-stacked spiral inductor; (b) 3-D vertically-stacked spiral inductor with ferrite core; (c) section view of ferrite-core vertically-stacked spiral inductor; and (d) plan view of coil layout (dout: coil outer diameter; IMD: inter-metal-dielectric; HDP, high density plasma oxidation; SRO, Si-rich oxidation)

support the coil after the dielectrics removal to improve the inductor structure. The inductors all have 10 m coil line widths, w, 5 m line spacings, s, and 200 m200 m outer diameters, dout, with various number of coil turns, n, per layer. The inductors all use 6 metal-layers, 6M, of Al in the CMOS with various spiral equivalent layers, m, with parallel connections between different metal layers by vias. Thus, m=2 means that the M6/M5/M4/M3/M2 layers are connected in parallel by vias, m=3 means M6/M5/M4/M3 are connected, m=4 means M6/M5/M4 are connected, etc. The core and the space between the coil turns are filled with soft-magnetic ferrite material. The inductor top is also covered with ferrite material, forming an enclosed magnetic loop. 1.2 Circuit model
Fig. 2 Two-port -type equivalent circuit of the ferrite-core inductor: (a) equivalent circuit for an air-core reference inductor; (b) circuit model for the ferrite-core inductor; and (c) simplified circuit model for the ferrite-core inductor

The circuit simulation and design optimization is based on an accurate equivalent circuit model for the on-chip magnetic inductor, which has not been widely used.

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determined from the imaginary part, r , of the ferrite tap and the metal traces due to the ferrite medium. Cm1 relative complex permeability, which reflects the is the additional total capacitance between each metal magnetic losses in the ferrite. For a low-permeability trace. Cm2 are additional ferrite-induced capacitances ferrite-core solenoid inductor in a weak magnetic field, to Cox and Cm3 are shunt capacitances to Cox. Ohmic Rm is almost proportional to r , i.e., losses in the ferrite are neglected due to its high elecRm = r Ls (2) trical resistivity. However, for ferrite-core on-chip inductors with thin Lm can be expressed as films and small sizes, is smaller than r and Rm is (1) Lm = Ls smaller than the value calculated using Eq. (2) as well. The factor is determined by the real part, r, of the Element combination can be used to simplify the ferrite relative complex permeability and the structural equivalent circuit model as shown in Fig. 2c. Then, the parameters. In the case of an inductor surrounded by inductance, L, is given by an infinite bulk ferrite, is nearly equal to r. Rm is 2 2 2 Lsm ( Rsm + Lsm )(Csm + Cpm ) L= (3) 2 L R 2 2 sm 4 L2 2(Csm + Cpm ) + sm + 1 sm (Csm + Cpm ) + Lsm 2 R pm Rpm

The Q factor is Rpm Lsm Q= Rsm Rpm + [1 + ( Lsm /Rsm )2 ]Rsm

2 Rsm (Cpm + Csm ) 2 Lsm (Cpm + Csm ) (4) 1 Lsm

The self-resonance frequency, f0, (corresponding to Q=0) is given by

1 f0 = 2

R sm Lsm (Csm + Cpm ) Lsm 1

(5)

2 Simulation and Analysis

2.1 Simulation method and parameter extraction

This section describes detailed quantitative studies using Ansoft HFSS V.10 on the influence of the ferrite-filled structure, the device spiral structure, and the ferrite material permeability on the inductor performance. The inductor performance parameters were extracted by fist calculating the two-port scattering matrix. Then, the influence of the test pattern is removed to get the impedance matrix, Y. Then, the inductance, L, and Q factor are extracted as 1 Im(1/y11 ) 1 L = Im (6) , Q = Re(1/y11 ) y11
2.2 Ferrite-filled structure

Three ferrite-filled structures, A, B, and C are shown in Fig. 3. Structure A has only ferrite core while structure

B has an air core with a top-coated ferrite film. Structure C has both the top-coated ferrite film and the ferrite core. The material parameters are ferrite permeabilities r =1.4 and r = 0, permittivity r = 4, and substrate resistivity sub = 1000 cm. The spiral structure has m=3 and n=1. The main inductor performance parameters are summarized in Table 1, where fmax and f0 are defined as the frequencies at which Q reaches Qmax and vanishes to zero and fcut-off is the cut-off frequency at which L for the ferrite inductor becomes smaller than that of the air-core reference. Therefore, fcut-off is the upper limit for the frequency range of the inductor performance improvement. Figure 4 shows the improvements in the ferrite-filled inductors of structures A, B, and C compared to the air-core reference. The results show that more ferrite filling leads to more L enhancement. Compared with the air-core reference, ferrite-core inductor A has 9.08% better L and 3.84% better Q at 1 GHz. For the ferrite top-coated structure B, L is 9.71% better and Q is 8.87% better at 1 GHz. Structure C with both the ferrite top-coat and the ferrite-core more significantly enhances both L and Q in the frequency range of 0.1-2 GHz, with L 19.11% better and Q 12.05% better at 1 GHz, as a result of the closed magnetic circuit. At higher frequencies above 2 GHz, structure B has the best Q enhancement as well as the best f0, fmax, and Qmax while that of structures A and C decline rapidly. This is attributed to the air core under the top-coated ferrite film in B, resulting in less magnetic flux penetration into the substrate and, therefore, less eddy current loss.

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Fig. 3 Cross sections of the various ferrite-filled structures: Structure A has only ferrite core, structure B has a ferrite top-coat and an air core, and structure C has both a ferrite top-coat and a ferrite core. Table 1 Inductor A B C ref fmax (GHz) L at fmax (nH) 2.7 3.4 2.5 3.7 3.7 3.6 4.0 3.3 Performance comparison for inductors A, B, and C Qmax 4.4 5.4 4.6 5.3 Gain L at 1 GHz (%) 9.1 9.7 19.1 Gain Q at 1 GHz (%) 3.8 8.9 12.1 f0 (GHz) 7.7 >10 7.5 >10 fcut-off (GHz) 7.4 10.6 7.2

Fig. 4

(a) (b) Improvements in the ferrite-filled inductors with structures A, B, and C compared to the air-core reference (ref)

2.3

Spiral structure

The device performance with different m and n (m is the number of spiral layers and n is the number of coil turns per layer) was simulated to investigate the influence of the structure on the inductors performance. Figure 5 shows the simulated L, Qmax, and fmax for different layout parameters m and n. Figure 5a shows that with increasing m or n, L increases as the coil length increases. For operation frequencies far from the

self-resonance peak point, L is proportional to the coil length. However, increasing m and n increases the series resistance and parasitic capacitance, as well as the magnetic flux penetration into the substrate, which results in larger eddy current losses. Therefore, Qmax and fmax decrease with increasing m and n as shown in Figs. 5b and 5c. The results indicate that L, Qmax, and fmax must be balanced with moderate m and n.

Fig. 5

(a) (b) (c) = 1.4, r = 0, ferrite filled structure C) Inductor performance for different layout parameters m and n ( r

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Figure 6 shows the improvement in the inductor performance for various m and n compared to the air-core reference. The results in Fig. 6a show that the enhancement in Q decreases with m increasing from 3 to 5, while the improvement in L increases. Figure 6b shows that Q improves more for n=1 than for n=2, while L improves on the contrary.
2.4 Ferrite material permeability

The ferrite properties are critical to the inductor performance, especially the permeability. This section describes the effect of the real and imaginary parts of the ferrite relative permeability, r jr, on the inductor performance for ferrite filled structure C and a spiral structure having m=2 and n=1. The results of inductor performance for various r and r are shown in Figs. 7 and 8. Figure 7a shows that the inductance improves with increasing permeability r ( r = 0 ), with L=1.5 nH at r = 1 , which is equivalent to the inductance of a SiO2-core reference inductor. L increases proportionally to r , which agrees with Eq. (1). r = 10 gives an increase of 97% at 1 GHz. The changes in Q and fmax for various r are shown in

Figs. 7b and 7c, which shows that, with increasing r , fmax decreases while Qmax rapidly increases. Q increases by 18.6% for r = 10 at fmax = 2.4 GHz. The simulation results show that the inductance L almost maintains constant as the imaginary part, r , of the relative permeability increases. Thus, r has little influences on L. Figures 8a and 8b show that a small increase in r leads to a drastic decrease of Q with a more gentle decrease of fmax. Therefore, ferrites with high r and low r over a wide frequency range will give improved L and Q.

Conclusions

This paper describes a magnetic-core vertically stackedspiral RF inductor structure. A lumped equivalent circuit is introduced. The simulation of magnetic-core vertically-stacked spiral inductors for various ferritefilled structures, spiral structures, and magnetic material permeabilities are presented. The results show that the novel inductor is a very promising and viable solution for compact, high quality, and high frequency on-chip inductors for high-end RF ICs.

Fig. 6 Improvement of inductor performance for different layout parameters m and n compared to the air-core refer = 0 ) = 1.4, r ence ( r

Fig. 7

(a) (b) (c) of the ferrite core ( r = 1.4, r = 0, structure C) Inductor performance for various r

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