To decrease the metal losses of RF spiral inductor,a novel layout structure with gradually reduced metal line width and space from outside to inside is presented. This gradual changed inductor has less eddy-current effect than the conventional inductor of fixed metal width and space. So the series resistance can be reduced and the quality （Q） factor of the inductor relating to metal losses is increased. The obtained experimental results corroborate the validity of the proposed method. For a 6nH inductor on high-resistivity silicon at 2.46GHz,Q factor of 14.25 is 11.3% higher than the conventional inductor with the same layout size. This inductor can be integrated with radio frequency integrated circuits to gain better performance in RF front end of a wireless communication system.
The silicon nano-crystalline (nc-Si) film is fabricated on <100> orientation,0.01Ω·cm resistivity,and p-type boron-doped silicon wafer by the anodic etching.The microstructure and the orientation of nc-Si are examined by the scanning electron microscopy,transmission electron microscopy,and X-ray diffraction spectroscopy,respectively.The average size of particle is estimated by Raman spectroscopy.The results show that the particle size of nc-Si film is scattered from 10nm to 20nm,the alignment is compact,the orientation is uniform,the expansion of lattice constant is negligible,and mechanical robustness and stability are good.The correlations between film structure and the experiment parameters such as etching time,HF concentration,and etching current density are discussed.As a potential application,efficient field emission is observed from the nc-Si film,and the turn-on field is about 3V/μm at 0.1μA/cm 2 of current density,which is close to carbon nanotube film's.
