High-Q Inductors for Realization of Low Insertion Loss Baluns and Couplers Integrated in Thin Film Multilayer MCM-D Technology for Wireless Applications

This paper presents spiral inductors with quality factors of more than 100 in a thin film muli-layer MCM-D technology. Together with other passive components, such as capacitors, resistors or interconnection lines, these spiral inductors are used to realize integrated baluns and various types of couplers for front-end systems for wireless application. Because o f the high-Q of the inductors and the high overall performance of the integrated passive components in general, the insertion loss of the baluns and couplers is kept very low. This, together with the enhanced miniaturization, leads to higher packaging densities and lower cost of wireless applications.