Through-silicon-via inductor: Is it real or just a fantasy?

作者：Umamaheswara Rao Tida, Cheng Zhuo, Yiyu Shi · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.1109/aspdac.2014.6742994 · 被引用次数：35 · 研究领域：3D IC and TSV technologies、Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit Design、Semiconductor materials and devices

Through-silicon-vias (TSVs) can potentially be used to implement inductors in three-dimensional (3D) integrated systems for minimal footprint and large inductance. However, different from conventional 2D spiral inductors, TSV inductors are fully buried in the lossy substrate, thus suffering from low quality factor. In this paper, we propose a novel shield mechanism utilizing the micro-channel, a technique conventionally used for heat removal, to reduce the substrate loss. This technique increases the quality factor and the inductance of the TSV inductor by up to 21x and 17x respectively. It enables us to implement TSV inductors of up to 38x smaller area and 33% higher quality factor, compared with spiral inductors of the same inductance. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first proposal on improving quality factor of TSV inductors. We hope our study shall point out a new and exciting research direction for 3D IC designers.