Temperature Dependence of Thin Film Spiral Inductors on Alumina over a Temperature Range of 25 to 475° C

In this paper, we present an analysis of inductors on an Alumina substrate over the temperature range of 25 to 475 degrees C. Five sets of inductors, each set consisting of a 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and a 4.5 turn inductor with different line width and spacing, were measured on a high temperature probe station from 10 MHz to 30 GHz. From these measured characteristics, it is shown that the inductance is nearly independent of temperature for low frequencies compared to the self resonant frequency, the parasitic capacitances are independent of temperature, and the resistance varies nearly linearly with temperature. These characteristics result in the self resonant frequency decreasing by only a few percent as the temperature is increased from 25 to 475 degrees C, but the maximum quality factor decreases by a factor of 2 to 3. These observations based on measured data are confirmed through 2D simulations using Sonnet software.