Thin-Film Inductor Designs and Materials for High-Current Low-Voltage Power

to reprint or republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. I. INTRODUCTION Low voltages, high currents and fast load transients are emerging challenges in power delivery for high-performance digital electronics such as microprocessors. Power converters for these applications need to have fast response, high efficiency and small size. The inductor in the power converter plays a central role in determining the performance each of these aspects. Thin-film inductors offer possible advantages [1]–[16]. However, these applications require higher efficiency, higher power density, and higher current than is offered by most thin-film inductors. In order to meet these requirements, we are studying both magnetic materials and inductor designs. As a typical example, we are fabricating inductors for a 3.3 V to 1.1 V, 7 A DC-DC power converter operating between 1 MHz and 50 MHz.