High-performance planar inductor on thick oxidized porous silicon (OPS) substrate

Abstract

To obtain a high-performance planar inductor, we used the oxidized porous silicon (OPS) layer with 25-mu m-thick SiO2 as substrate. The measured radio frequency (RF) performances of the planar inductor on the OPS layer are comparable to those on the semi-insulating GaAs substrate. For a 6.29-nH inductor, resonant frequency of 13.8 GHz and maximum quality factor (Q) of 13.3 are obtained. These results show that the utilization of the OPS layer can push silicon passive monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) technology at least up to 12 GHz.