Number of Turns Optimization for On-Chip Power Inductor Using a 3-D Physical Model

Abstract

High inductance-density with high saturation current on-chip integrated power inductors support achieving high-density integrated power conversion. To guide the design of on-chip planar power inductor, a 3-D physical model in ANSYS®/Maxwell® is developed and utilized in this paper to evaluate the effect of copper winding number of turns on two of the main power inductor performance metrics, namely the inductance value/density and the saturation current. The tradeoff between the inductance value/density and the saturation current as a function of the copper winding number of turns is evaluated using the presented physical model.