This letter investigates the role of artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) surfaces in increasing the inductance of printed inductors. Both printed circuit board (PCB) and on-chip loop inductor prototypes backed by spiral AMC surfaces are designed and fabricated for this purpose. Measurements of PCB prototypes demonstrate that the loop inductance increases by a factor of 2 or higher within the AMC operation bands. Furthermore, experimental evaluations of the developed test-chips prove successful miniaturization of a loop inductor when the AMC reflector is employed. The drawback of this technique is degradation of the quality factor near the AMC operation regions, which is shown to be caused by the generation of eddy currents in the spiral conductor paths of the AMC surface. Index Terms-Artificial magnetic conductor (AMC), electromagnetic band-gap structures, inductor miniaturization, on-chip inductors.
3D IC based systems necessitate a chip-package co-design approach since the TSV response in the chip stack can propagate into the package. In this work, we demonstrate a chip-interposer co-analysis methodology that includes the 3D CAD model of the 3D IC and compare this to the conventional analysis techniques. Our findings demonstrate that the coupling between signal TSV's in the chip stack has a significant impact on the overall channel response and needs to be carefully modeled in order to obtain accurate results.
BackgroundOver the past decade, the trend in the consumer electronics industry has been to develop high performance multifunctional products with a compact size and reduced cost. Modern systems demand new technologies that can integrate RF, analog, digital and sensor functionalities while maintaining minimal interference among different systems. Multi-functional integration can be achieved by stacking multiple chips vertically (3D IC). 3D ICs promise more than Moore integration by packing many functions into a small form factor. To implement 3D IC technology, requires chip to chip interposers as well as through silicon vias (TSVs) [1]- [6].For 3D IC technology, a chip-package co-design approach is necessary since the TSV response in the chip stack can propagate into the package. With respect to 3D ICs which are stacked using TSVs, crosstalk is a major concern especially in the case of dense TSV arrays, not only in signal nets, but also in the power delivery network (PDN) as well. It has been demonstrated that the crosstalk waveform exhibits a distinct RC behavior leading to a slow decay of the coupled waveform, which is unique to TSVs [1]- [2]. This RC effect can be quite detrimental since it can create inter symbol interference (ISI). Memory interfaces also require a co-design approach. These interfaces are currently designed to support single-ended data rates in the 1GHz-plus range, and serial links are running upwards of 10 Gb/s. This necessitates a precise design analysis and rules-based control of each of these signals at the die, package and PCB levels. However when chip, package and board power delivery components are designed separately, there is no opportunity to optimize the global PDN and once these are connected together, this could produce unexpected results.In this work, we demonstrate a chip-package co-analysis methodology that includes the 3D CAD model of the 3D IC and compare this to the conventional analysis approach which is to represent the IC using either IBIS or SPICE equivalent models. To demonstrate the co-design methodology, we consider two realistic test cases for mobile applications in this work. The first is composed of a 2.5D silicon interposer
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.