High-quality integrated inductors based on multilayered meta-conductors

We demonstrate high-quality integrated inductors built from a multilayer of alternating copper and ferromagnetic films. The multilayer acts as a meta-conductor whose effective permeability becomes nearly zero at its ferromagnetic anti-resonance frequency. This leads to a suppression of the skin effect and a significant increase in the quality factor of the device. Experiments show an up to 86% increase in quality factor compared to conventional copper-based spiral inductors at high frequencies. © 2012 IEEE