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Magnetic Core TSV-Inductor Design and Optimization for On-chip DC-DC Converter

Published: 06 June 2022 Publication History

Abstract

The conventional on-chip spiral inductor consumes a significant top-metal routing area, thereby preventing its popularity in many on-chip applications. Recently through-silicon-via– (TSV) based inductor (also known as a TSV-inductor) with a magnetic core has been proved to be a viable option for the on-chip DC-DC converter. The operating conditions of these inductors play a major role in maximizing the performance and efficiency of the DC-DC converter. However, there is a critical need to study the design and optimization details of magnetic core TSV-inductors with the unique three-dimensional structure embedding magnetic core. This article aims to provide a clear understanding of the modeling details of a magnetic core TSV-inductor and a design and optimization methodology to assist efficient inductor design. Moreover, a machine learning–assisted model combining physical details and artificial neural network is also proposed to extract the equivalent circuit to further facilitate DC-DC converter design. Experimental results show that the optimized TSV-inductor with the magnetic core and air-gap can achieve inductance density improvement of up to 7.7 \(\times\) and quality factor improvements of up to 1.6 \(\times\) for the same footprint compared with the TSV-inductor without a magnetic core. For on-chip DC-DC converter applications, the converter efficiency can be improved by up to 15.9% and 6.8% compared with the conventional spiral and TSV-inductor without magnetic core, respectively.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Design and Reliability Assessment of Inductor for Non-isolated DC-DC Buck Converter2023 First International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics and Computational Intelligence (ICAEECI)10.1109/ICAEECI58247.2023.10370977(1-8)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Modeling and Thermal Stress Coupling Optimization Design of TSV Inductors in On-Chip DC/DC ConvertersIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.333670511(133189-133198)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)Design, Analysis and Optimization of Magnetic-Core Solenoid Inductor for On-Chip Multi-Phase Buck ConverterIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.328135911(90563-90574)Online publication date: 2023
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  1. Magnetic Core TSV-Inductor Design and Optimization for On-chip DC-DC Converter

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      Published In

      cover image ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
      ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems  Volume 27, Issue 5
      September 2022
      274 pages
      ISSN:1084-4309
      EISSN:1557-7309
      DOI:10.1145/3540253
      Issue’s Table of Contents

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

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      Publication History

      Published: 06 June 2022
      Online AM: 07 March 2022
      Accepted: 01 December 2021
      Revised: 01 November 2021
      Received: 01 July 2021
      Published in TODAES Volume 27, Issue 5

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      Author Tags

      1. Magnetic core TSV-inductor
      2. equivalent circuit
      3. air gap
      4. DC-DC converter

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      • Research-article
      • Refereed

      Funding Sources

      • National Natural Science Foundation of China
      • Key Area R&D Program of Guangdong Province

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      View all
      • (2023)Design and Reliability Assessment of Inductor for Non-isolated DC-DC Buck Converter2023 First International Conference on Advances in Electrical, Electronics and Computational Intelligence (ICAEECI)10.1109/ICAEECI58247.2023.10370977(1-8)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2023
      • (2023)Modeling and Thermal Stress Coupling Optimization Design of TSV Inductors in On-Chip DC/DC ConvertersIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.333670511(133189-133198)Online publication date: 2023
      • (2023)Design, Analysis and Optimization of Magnetic-Core Solenoid Inductor for On-Chip Multi-Phase Buck ConverterIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.328135911(90563-90574)Online publication date: 2023
      • (2023)LMM: A Fixed-Point Linear Mapping Based Approximate Multiplier for IoTJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-023-2572-838:2(298-308)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2023

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