Affiliation
Meeting ID: 971 8785 5358 Passcode: 310123
Event Type:
MSE Grad Presentation
Date:
Talk Title:
Materials and Processes for High Conversion Ratio High Efficiency Package Embedded Inductors for Integrated Voltage Regulators
Location:
Pettit Microelectronics Building - 102B and via Zoom Videoconferencing
Event Link:
https://gatech.zoom.us/j/97187855358?pwd=eWNmY1NCQ1V3cTRQKytXeHo5cTArQT09

Committee Members:   

  • Prof. Madhavan Swaminathan, Co-advisor, ECE/MSE 
  • Prof. Mark D. Losego, Co-advisor, MSE
  • Himani Sharma, PhD, MSE
  • Mohanalingam Kathaperumal, PhD, ECE 
  • Prof. Maryam Saeedifard, ECE 

Abstract:

With data centers taking the center stage of most of our daily computing needs, it is necessary to take a close look at how we can improve their efficiency. According to DW and IEA statistics, data centres take up anywhere between 200-250 TWh of electricity a year which is more than some of the countries. Power conversion and cooling take up a major chunk of the electricity needs of the data center. The focus of this research is going to be on the inductors that form a part of the buck converter circuit which converts high input DC voltages to low DC voltages (1 V) required to power the System-on Chip (SoC). The losses in a buck converter circuit stem from the conduction losses of the MOSFET and inductor, the inductor’s AC magnetic losses and the MOSFET dynamic or switching loss. The inductor being part of a bigger system must be able to match the frequency at which the MOSFET’s maximum efficiency is at. For integrated voltage regulators, the inductors must have a small footprint while maintaining the high inductance density, high current density, and low losses (DC and AC). To improve the inductor efficiency, the magnetic core and the design must be taken into consideration. High permeability and low loss materials are hard to find. Also, novel inductor designs with currently available materials can’t meet the target metrics. It is also important to be able to fabricate these designs in a manner that they can be integrated into the package substrate.

Previous work has shown that flake based metal polymer composites achieve high permeability thereby high inductance density at the cost of low current handling whereas low permeability materials achieve high current densities with low inductances. The work proposes to achieve the following objectives:

1. Study the effect of a sphere-flake oxide coated metal fillers in a metal polymer composite magnetic core on the power loss metric (Racx)

2. Fabrication and characterization of novel inductor designs using a semi-additive patterning (SAP) process

3. Design and demonstration of glass substrate embedded inductors