Power-efficient voltage tunable RF integrated magnetoelectric inductors with FeGaB/Al2O3 multilayer films

Abstract

This work reports new integrated GHz magnetic inductors based on solenoid structures with FeGaB/Al2O3 multilayer films, which show significantly enhanced inductance and quality factor at GHz frequencies over their air core counterparts. These inductors show excellent high-frequency performance with a wide operation frequency range of DC-2.5GHz, in which the inductance of the integrated magnetic inductors show textgreater100% enhancement compared with that of the same size air core inductor. Voltage tunable magnetoelectric inductors were fabricated with MEMS processing by putting these inductors on 0.5mm thick ferroelectric (011) cut lead magnesium niobate - lead titanate PMN-PT slab, which showed a voltage tunable inductance of textgreater100%. These novel voltage tunable GHz inductors with giant tunable inductance show great promise for applications in radio frequency integrated circuits. © 2014 IEEE.