The Tyndall FAMES team announces the successful full-wafer fabrication of stripline inductors with laminated CZT magnetic cores. Achieving ultra-compact size at the chip level, these components overcome the “bulky magnetics” bottleneck, enabling seamless integration with advanced FD-SOI technologies in power management ICs.
In modern power management systems, magnetic components for energy storage remain the primary bottleneck. The challenge lies at the intersection of material science, electromagnetics, and nanofabrication: how can we make an inductor as compact as silicon ICs without sacrificing efficiency?
On-silicon magnetic technology is the key enabler for this transition. By bringing efficient magnetic components to the chip level, we enable a new generation of integrated power management systems. This technology allows for the potential co-integration of magnetics directly with Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD-SOI) power management ICs, significantly improving power density and performance.
Within the framework of the FAMES project, our primary mission has been to bridge the gap between theoretical magnetic performance and scalable silicon fabrication. FAMES provided the collaborative ecosystem necessary to refine the integration of laminated thin-film CZT (Cobalt-Zirconium-Tantalum) magnetic cores into a standard silicon workflow, ensuring that these high-performance materials could be processed reliably at scale.
In the fabrication run completed in December 2025, we achieved the successful production of on-silicon stripline inductor wafers. Utilizing 100 mm wafers, we fabricated hundreds of individual inductors in a single fabrication run. Each component was designed to meet rigorous power converter system specifications, ensuring industrial relevance from the outset.
The subsequent measurement validation phase has confirmed the success of the run. We evaluated critical performance metrics, including inductance values in the range of 3–5 nH and a peak quality factor (Q) exceeding 8, all within an inductor thickness of only 30 µm. Notably, the results for DC and AC resistance, alongside the Q-factor analysis, demonstrate that these laminated CZT cores offer the high-frequency efficiency required for next-generation power applications.
This achievement represents a pivotal step for the FAMES project. Beyond the successful material and process development, this run provides a library of validated samples for future heterogeneous integration into power electronic systems. By proving that multiple designs can coexist on the same wafer, we have laid the foundation for the delivery of inductor samples to the ACCESS project, a complementary EU initiative, scheduled for late 2026.
Yi Dou, Sambuddha Khan, Cian O’ Mathuna (Tyndall National Institute)
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Website designed and made by Perceptiom and FAMES
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