A Horizontal-Winding Multipermeability LTCC Inductor for a Low-profile Hybrid DC/DC Converter

Distributed air-gap inductors have the advantage of reducing winding loss in high switching frequency dc/dc converters. However, they also have the disadvantage of uneven distribution of flux density, which inevitably leads to uncompleted utilization of magnetic material. This paper proposes a horizontal-winding multipermeability low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) inductor to increase inductance and improve efficiency without the necessity of increasing inductor volume. For the purpose of simplicity, a two-permeability LTCC inductor is taken as an example for analysis and comparison. Design of such an inductor is demonstrated with the aid of 2-D finite elementary analysis simulation. A two-permeability LTCC inductor together with a single-permeability LTCC inductor is fabricated for measuring and testing. The measured results show the two-permeability inductor has higher inductance than the single-permeability inductor. Both inductors are tested in a 5-V input, 3.3-V output dc/dc converter to test their performances. The testing results show the two-permeability LTCC inductor could further improve the efficiency of high-frequency dc/dc converters compared with the single-permeability LTCC inductor.