An effective approach for thin-film magnetic core loss characterization at high frequencies
摘要
To reduce the volume of the on-chip integrated magnetic components for fully integrated voltage regulators, two approaches can be considered: increasing the operating frequency to reduce the inductance requirement, and utilizing high permeability soft magnetic thin films to effectively increase the inductance density. Hence, the accurate measurement of thin-film magnetic core losses at high frequencies is essential for the effective analysis and design of such on-chip magnetic components. However, the classical dual-winding method using toroidal core transformers encounters various challenges when measuring the losses in thin-film magnetic cores at high frequencies, such as the phase discrepancies inherent in high-frequency core loss measurement systems, the increasing air-core coupling effect, the non-ideal coupling due to the leakage inductance, etc. To address these issues, this paper comprehensively investigates the impacts of phase discrepancies, air-core coupling effect, and leakage inductance on the measurement accuracy of high-frequency thin-film magnetic core losses, proposing an effective error elimination method for the aforementioned factors.