Realization of three-dimensional solenoidal microcoils with air core in low temperature co-fired ceramics technology

A novel microcoil design employing an exquisite feature of low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) technology - a multilayered structures fabrication - is presented in this work. The intended purpose of the microcoils is their efficient implementation in a system for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Sub-millimeter dimensions, cylindrical shape, low resistance, high self-resonant frequency of the microcoil are crucial for the efficiency of NMR experiments. The microcoils have air-filled quasi-solenoidal shape where every layer of LTCC tape accommodates one half of the microcoil's winding, 12 windings in total. After the fabrication, 32 test samples with different sizes were characterized with a vector network analyzer, providing measurement results in terms of inductance and self-resonant frequency.