Substrate engineering of inductors on SOI for improvement of Q-factor and application in LNA

TL;DR

This paper introduces a substrate engineering technique using femtosecond laser milling to suspend inductors on SOI, significantly improving their Q-factor and noise performance in RF circuits.

Contribution

It presents a novel femtosecond laser milling process for substrate engineering that enhances inductor Q-factors and noise performance in RF applications on SOI.

Findings

Up to 92% improvement in inductor Q-factor.

Reduced parallel capacitance enables high-frequency operation.

0.1 dB noise figure improvement in LNA.

Abstract

High Q-factor inductors are critical in designing high performance RF/microwave circuits on SOI technology. Substrate losses is a key limiting factor when designing inductors with high Q-factors. In this context, we report a substrate engineering method that enables improvement of quality factors of already fabricated inductors on SOI. A novel femtosecond laser milling process is utilized for the fabrication of locally suspended membranes of inductors with handler silicon completely etched. Such flexible membranes suspended freely on the BOX show up to 92 % improvement in Q factor for single turn inductor. The improvement in Q-factor is reported on large sized inductors due to reduced parallel capacitance which allows enhanced operation of inductors at high frequencies. A compact model extraction methodology has been developed to model inductor membranes. These membranes have been utilized for the improvement of noise performance of LNA working in the 4.9,5.9 GHz range. A 0.1 dB improvement in noise figure has been reported by taking an existing design and suspending the input side inductors of the LNA circuit. The substrate engineering method reported in this work is not only applicable to inductors but also to active circuits, making it a powerful tool for enhancement of RF devices.