Electrostatically driven tunable radio frequency inductor

Abstract

An electrostatically driven tunable radio frequency (RF) inductor with large inductance tuning range consisting of electroplated soft magnetic permalloy (Ni 80 Fe 20 alloy) plate was proposed in this paper. The fabricated tunable inductor exhibits a large tunable inductance range up to 77.8%, together with improved quality factor (Q-factor) at high frequencies. Such tunability of inductance and Q-factor was due to the magnetoelectric coupling effect between the soft magnetic permalloy plate and the spiral inductor, which lead to the magnetic flux of the inductor and mutual inductance change. The concept of tuning inductance by using electroplated soft magnetic permalloy has large potential for wide range RFIC applications.

Integrated Magnetics and Magnetoelectrics for Sensing, Power, RF, and Microwave Electronics

“…Another perspective is to change the properties of the magnetic core or the magnetic field distribution in it. Following this direction, researchers tried to control the magnetic flux by thermal actuation [73] or metal shield [74]. DC current was also widely used to modify the properties of magnetic core.…”

Computation of capacitance and electrostatic forces for the electrostatically driving actuators considering fringe effects

“…For the parallel plate capacitor with air gap, in traditional theory, the fringe effects or fringe fields are neglected (Fang et al 2010). The ideal capacitance for the parallel plate capacitor is given as where C 0 is the capacitance of the parallel plate capacitor, a is the length of the plate, b is the width of the plate, ε is the dielectric constant, and d is the gap between the two plates.…”

Tunable Inductors Using Integrated Vanadium Dioxide Phase Change Thin Films

“…Although the MEMS structures were widely used in many applications, they require complex fabrication and structures [2,3]. To achieve high quality and low loss requirements, the size of the inductor is usually large, and the fabrication process is normally complicated compared to the device proposed in this article [4][5][6]. The proposed research makes it possible for a novel tunable inductive structure with smaller size and straight forward manufacturing.…”