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Nanofabrication of Inductive Components for Integrated Power Supply On Chip

Project type: Ph.d project
Project responsible: Hoà Lê Thanh
Supervisors: Flemming Jensen (Main), Anpan Han (Co), Ziwei Ouyang (Co), Arnold Knott (CO)
Partners involved: DTU Danchip, DTU Elektro

Project description

Power supplies are essential sub-systems to power electronic devices. They can be found in almost all electronic devices, from traditional electrical devices such as cars, televisions, CD players, and cellular phones to modern intelligent electronic devices and systems such as wearable devices, light emitting diode (LED) applications, and internet of things (IoTs). As more functions are packed in a limited space in such electronic systems, power supplies are required to be more compact and more efficient with a lower manufacture cost. Hence, miniaturization has become the main trend for developing future generation of power supplies.

One way of miniaturization is monolithic integration of power supplies or so-called power supply on chip (PwrSoC). The PwrSoC vision is to integrate all active and passive power electronics components on one chip. Higher integration lowers the cost and increases both efficiency and power density. On the evolution route towards PwrSoC, the intermediate short-term solution is power supply in package (PSiP) in which the discrete inductors and capacitors are co-packaged together with the power management integrated circuits. SMPS, which incorporate a switching regulator to convert electrical power efficiently, are widely investigated for PSiP and PwrSoC due to its high efficiency and high power density. It is evident that the development of such integrated SMPS will play an important role in future civilization and also in the fight against climate change.

A challenge for developing integrated SMPS is to miniaturize bulky energy-storing elements e.g. inductors. Inductors are by far the most bulky and lossy components in the SMPS circuits, therefore, miniaturizing power inductors is needed. One route is to increase the switching frequency of SMPS that enables the use of smaller inductors with lower inductance value, thus reducing the overall size of SMPS. The evolution of integrated power supplies is highly correlated to the increase in the switching frequency, for example 8 - 20 MHz for co-packaged or stacked PSiP and to 30 - 300 MHz of VHF range for PwrSoC. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology is a promising solution that has a great potential for heterogeneous integration of microinductors.

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 ==Project description==
-Power supplies converting high AC power (100-240V) to lower, DC voltages (1-12V), play an important role in products such as LED lightning, intelligent and energy saving control electronics, and computer/cell phone battery chargers. While the electronics have developed rapidly and significantly reduced their physical size and manufacturing cost, the power supply technologies have been lagging behind in the last 10 years. There is a consensus in the electronics industry to make the power supply smaller, lighter, and cheaper. TinyPower is a project with commercial potential with an ambition of developing the world’s smallest SMPS with power density up to 4 W/cm3 It might be a promising bridge catching up with the dramatic growth in electronic technologies and linking to a potentially large market of smart devices. One example is the potential market for small (<5 Watt) off-line (AC to DC) power supplies which has been predicted to grow towards 2020.
-This project focuses on engineering integrated inductive components using advanced micro- and nanofabrication technologies with the ultimate goal of commercialization of TinyPower’s supply. The inductors fabricated in the footprint less than 5mm2 will operate at ultrahigh frequency (UHF) domain (0.3 to 3 GHz) and will be able to carry the input current of 1A and output power of 5W. Since inductive devices are the most voluminous components in the SMPS, therefore, the reduction in inductor size could therefore enable a significant contribution to the overall system size. Using miniaturized inductors also facilitates manufacture, reducing the manufacturing costs, and thus yielding mass production of power supplies. The project objectives are described as follows:
-# High performance air-core inductors (Q>10, L>10nH) dedicated for operating at UHF domain (300 MHz – 3000 MHz)
+Power supplies are essential sub-systems to power electronic devices. They can be found in almost all electronic devices, from traditional electrical devices such as cars, televisions, CD players, and cellular phones to modern intelligent electronic devices and systems such as wearable devices, light emitting diode (LED) applications, and internet of things (IoTs). As more functions are packed in a limited space in such electronic systems, power supplies are required to be more compact and more efficient with a lower manufacture cost. Hence, miniaturization has become the main trend for developing future generation of power supplies.
-# High power density (efficiency > 90%, > 4W/cm3): manufacture of the inductors able to drive power of 5 W (1A, 5V) in an area of less than 5 mm2 is feasible.
-# Good stability and life-time: the inductors are purely made of copper (conductive winding) and silicon (substrate and anchors) without using polymer-based materials for good robustness and stability.
+One way of miniaturization is monolithic integration of power supplies or so-called power supply on chip (PwrSoC). The PwrSoC vision is to integrate all active and passive power electronics components on one chip. Higher integration lowers the cost and increases both efficiency and power density. On the evolution route towards PwrSoC, the intermediate short-term solution is power supply in package (PSiP) in which the discrete inductors and capacitors are co-packaged together with the power management integrated circuits. SMPS, which incorporate a switching regulator to convert electrical power efficiently, are widely investigated for PSiP and PwrSoC due to its high efficiency and high power density. It is evident that the development of such integrated SMPS will play an important role in future civilization and also in the fight against climate change.
+A challenge for developing integrated SMPS is to miniaturize bulky energy-storing elements e.g. inductors. Inductors are by far the most bulky and lossy components in the SMPS circuits, therefore, miniaturizing power inductors is needed. One route is to increase the switching frequency of SMPS that enables the use of smaller inductors with lower inductance value, thus reducing the overall size of SMPS. The evolution of integrated power supplies is highly correlated to the increase in the switching frequency, for example 8 - 20 MHz for co-packaged or stacked PSiP and to 30 - 300 MHz of VHF range for PwrSoC. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology is a promising solution that has a great potential for heterogeneous integration of microinductors.
 ==Publications==