| As the voltage supply levels drop below 1 volt for many low power consumer electronics, embedding the power supply control in the processor in many cases can save significant power. Most board level power converters consist of one or more integrated circuits with a few external passive components. Integration of the entire power converter would enable more coordinated power management, lower chip count, less printed circuit board area, and would be economically more favorable.;In this thesis micro inductors for fully integrated low voltage and low power DC-DC converters are designed, simulated and fabricated using a composition of aluminum, copper and nickel. A phenomenon of negative inductance was discovered during the work and further clarifications about negative inductors were performed by verifying and testing the fabricated negative micro inductors. Comparison with theoretical calculation confirms the negative inductance behavior. Functionality test of the negative micro inductor on a DC-DC converter is successfully demonstrated.;A novel design of an Interrupted Fixed Width (IFW) buck converter as an alternative solution from the commonly used PWM buck method is introduced. IFW offers simplicity and fewer components, and test comparisons show better power consumption and better efficiency than the PWM method. |
