Thermal and mechanical evaluation of micromachined planar spiral inductors

Micromachined planar spiral inductors and transformers have been largely proposed for RF applications, using MEMS processes. Q-factors and self-resonant frequencies have been significantly increased by suspending such structures. However, thermal and mechanical properties are somewhat compromised. In this paper, a complete analysis of such parameters is presented through extensive finite element method (FEM) simulations. Partially released structure is proposed to avoid these troubles