Effect of Temperature Variation and Packaging on SOI MEMS Inductor With DRIE Trench on Low-Resistivity Substrate

Abstract

This paper reports the implementation and wafer-level mechanical and RF testing of three types of MEMS inductor-octagonal, square, and circular; the latter over a temperature range -30°C to 150 °C. The devices were fabricated using a silicon on insulator process with deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) trench on a low-resistivity substrate (ρ = 1-10 Ω cm) and contains gold bond wire overpass to complete the inductance loop. The three inductors exhibited nominal inductance of 3.36, 12.15, and 3.29 nH with peak quality factor of 9.51, 6.91, and 7.26, respectively, and self-resonance frequency more than 10 GHz. Afterward, the inductors were packaged in a pin grid array package and postpackaging RF testing was carried out to analyze the effect of packaging on RF performance of the inductors.