Large suspended inductors on silicon and their use in a 2- mu m CMOS RF amplifier

Abstract

Large spiral inductors encased in oxide over silicon are shown to operate beyond the UHF band when the capacitance and loss resistance are greatly reduced by selective removal of the underlying substrate. Using a 100-nH inductor whose self-resonance lies at 3 GHz, a balanced tuned amplifier with a gain of 14 dB centered at 770 MHz has been implemented in a standard digital 2- mu m CMOS IC process. The core amplifier noise figure is 6 dB, and the power dissipation is 7 mW for a 3-V supply.