Experimental Characterization of On-Chip Single and Double-Coupling Spiral Inductors

Experimental investigations on on-chip single and double-coupling square spiral inductors on silicon substrate are performed. For each pair of double-coupling inductors, they have the same edge distance, but with different turn numbers. Based on the measured S-parameters using de-embedding procedure, the inductance and Q-factor of the single square inductor are examined at first, and good agreement is obtained in the extracted inductance, compared to the predicted values using a closed-form series inductance equation. While for double-coupling spiral inductors, the smaller the product of two turn numbers, the weaker coupling will be, and in particular at low frequencies.