A Toroidal Power Inductor Using Radial-Anisotropy
Thin-Film Magnetic Material Based on a Hybrid
Fabrication Process
Jizheng Qiu, Daniel V. Harburg and Charles R. Sullivan
Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth
14 Engineering Drive, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
Email: {jizheng.qiu.th, daniel.v.harburg, charles.r.sullivan}@dartmouth.edu
Abstract— This paper presents improvements for the design
and fabrication of high-frequency toroidal power inductors with
and without radial-anisotropy thin-film magnetic material. An
improved winding resistance model for toroids is developed
considering an angle factor for actual winding shape, the effect
of spacing between turns and loss associated with exterior
current in the circumferential direction. A hybrid process for
fabricating low-profile magnetic-core toroids is presented. The
process uses standard flex printed circuit board (PCB) technology
for the top and bottom winding layers with vias electroplated
after sandwiching the magnetic core between the two winding
layers. Thin-film magnetic material (Co-Zr-O) is deposited in
the presence of a radial magnetic field, which induces radial
anisotropy in the toroidal core. Small-signal measurements show
that the toroidal core has a relative permeability over 40 at
frequencies up to several hundred megahertz, and very high
quality factor in the frequency range below 100 MHz. Air-
core and magnetic-core toroidal inductors using this hybrid
fabrication process were built and tested at small-signal levels.
Magnetic-core toroids showed a higher inductance and quality
factor than air-core toroids at frequencies below 100 MHz. This
winding loss model and fabrication process can be applied to
both air-core and magnetic-core toroidal inductors.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Power converters using a switching frequency in the mega-
hertz range have been developed for miniaturization [1], [2].
Magnetic components with high efficiency, high power density
and low profile are needed for integration in power-supply-
in-package and/or power-supply-on-chip [3]–[7]. Toroidal in-
ductors have attractive geometries compared to solenoids and
planar spirals, as they have little external field, which can cause
electromagnetic interference and induce eddy-current loss in
nearby conductors [8]–[11]. Magnetic-core inductors are at-
tractive for multimegahertz (e.g. 1–50 MHz) power converters
to achieve low profile while maintaining high efficiency [7].
Many anisotropic thin-film magnetic materials work well in
the multi-megahertz range, and have low hysteresis loss, if
the flux is aligned with the hard axis of the anisotropic
material [5]. Racetrack inductors, which have closed-core
This work was supported in part by the Advanced Research Project Agency-
Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, and in part by the Interconnect
Focus Center, one of the six research centers funded under the Focus Center
Research Program, a Semiconductor Research Corporation program.
978-1-4673-4355-8/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 1660
magnetic material surrounding windings [4], [6], [12]–[14],
take advantage of uniaxial anisotropy of the magnetic material
to achieve low hysteresis loss. However, the device fabrication
process requires two deposition steps of magnetic material,
which is generally expensive. Moreover, racetrack inductors
have significant loss in the magnetic vias, which connect
upper and lower sections of the core, because the flux is
perpendicular to the magnetic layers and induces large eddy-
current loss [4], [12], [15]–[17]. Toroidal inductors, with only
one magnetic material deposition step needed, also avoid the
magnetic-via loss because the majority of the flux is in the
plane of the magnetic layers. However, they require special
anisotropy in magnetic cores to perform properly. A radial-
anisotropy thin-film toroial core, with a radial easy axis and
circumferential hard axis was proposed in [18], [19] to be
used in toroidal inductors. The hard axis is aligned with the
direction of flux flow in the toroidal core, leading to small
hysteresis loss.
In this paper, radial-anisotropy toroidal cores with thick-
nesses of 10 µm and 40 µm were developed and characterized.
The toroidal cores demonstrated a quality factor higher than
100 at frequencies below 100 MHz, which is the frequency
range of interest for most power applications. An improved
winding resistance model for toroids is developed. The model
takes into account an angle factor for actual winding shape,
the effect of spacing between turns and loss associated with
exterior current in the circumferential direction. This winding
resistance model can predict winding resistances accurately
in the multimegahertz frequency range, where skin effect and
proximity effect become significant [20]. Compared to finite-
element analysis (FEA), the proposed resistance model is
much faster, which is important in an optimization process
which requires a large number of iterations. This model can
be applied to both air-core and magnteic-core toroids.
This paper also presents an inexpensive hybrid fabrication
process for low-profile toroidal inductors. The top and bottom
winding layers of the toroid are fabricated in a printed circuit
board (PCB), with vias electroplated afterwards. A toroidal
magnetic core can be integrated into the winding during the
fabrication process to build magnetic-core toroids. Low-profile
 ri ro

݈ଵ ro θ ri
i ݈ଶ i
w
(a) Simplified 1D model (b) Actual winding with di-
with radial current path agonal current path
Fig. 1. 3D model of an air-core toroidal inductor with foil winding. Fig. 2. Schematics of a N-turn toroid (top or bottom layer).

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF T OROIDS U SED IN 3D FEA S IMULATIONS
air-core and magnetic-core toroid prototypes using the hybrid
fabrication process were built and tested at small-signal levels. Toroid 1 Toroid 2 Toroid 3
parameters
(N=4) (N=16) (N=32)
II. A N I MPROVED W INDING R ESISTANCE M ODEL ro (mm) 2.8 2.8 2.8
Analysis of winding resistance in toroids with foil windings ri (mm) 1.7 1.7 1.7
using analytical models or FEA has been discussed in [9], h (mm) 0.3 0.3 0.3
[21]–[25]. The model proposed in [22] accounts for all the t (µm) 50 50 50
effects discussed here and is a good alternative whereas the w (µm) 140 185 145
others are more approximate. An air-core toroidal inductor
with a single-layer foil winding is shown in Fig. 1. The
foil winding has a rectangular cross section, with the same and magnetic-core toroids, and is not specific to any one
thickness for the top and bottom layers, and the inner and outer fabrication method.
vias. The winding resistance model discussed in this paper is
based on this winding geometry. Fig. 2a shows the top-view A. Angle Factor for Winding Resistance
of the winding layout of an N -turn toroid with inner radius Fig. 2b shows the actual toroid with diagonal current paths.
ri and outer radius ro , based on radial current paths. ri and Compared to the radial-path model, the resistances of the inner
ro are defined as the distance from the center of the toroid and outer vias for the diagonal-path model remain the same
to the center face of the inner and outer vias, respectively. as (2) and (3), but the top and bottom layer traces have a a
The top and bottom layers are symmetric. Assuming zero longer trace and smaller effective width. An angle factor (F )
spacing between turns (w), the basic dc resistance model for can be applied to correct the top and bottom layer resistances
the geometry shown in Fig. 2a is from (1) for the actual diagonal path
µ ¶2
N 2 ρ ro l2 r2 + ro2 − 2ri ro cos θ
Rt,dc = Rb,dc = ln (1) F = = i 2 (4)
2πt ri l1 (ro − ri )
N 2 ρh where l1 and l2 are the lengths of the current path in the
Ri,dc = (2)
2πri t top/bottom layer of each turn in the radial-path model and
π
diagonal-path model respectively and θ = N . The angle factor
N 2 ρh
Ro,dc = (3) is the same for both dc and ac resistances.
2πro t A model of angle factor (F 0 ) for the toroid winding re-
where Rt,dc , Rb,dc , Ri,dc and Ro,dc are dc resistances of top, sistance was also presented in [24]. The accuracy of the
bottom, inner, and outer conductors of the toroid, respectively. two models was compared to FEA results. Three types of
ρ is the conductor resistivity, t is the conductor thickness, and toroids with 4, 16, and 32 turns, as shown in Table I, were
h is the
p toroid thickness. For ac currents, if the skin depth δ analyzed using Ansys MAXWELL 3D FEA. A comparison of
(δ = ρ/(πf µ)) is much less than the conductor thickness, calculated and simulated dc winding loss is shown in Table II.
ac current flows in a layer that is one skin depth thick. Thus, It can be seen that for Toroids 2 and 3, both angle factors
the ac resistance is the same as (1) to (3), but with t replaced give accurate predictions; while for Toroid 1, angle factor F
by δ. is more accurate than F 0 . A comparison between these two
To develop a more accurate resistance model for toroids angle factors is also given in Fig. 3, as a function of number
with single-layer foil windings, we modify this model to of turns, giving ri /ro = 0.6. It can be seen from Fig. 3 that F
account for several additional factors: an angle factor for and F 0 converge as N increases (e.g. the difference between
the tilted actual winding geometry, non-zero spacing between F and F 0 is less than 2% for N > 10). F gives accurate
turns, and loss associated with radial and circumferential corrections for all three examples. However, F 0 becomes less
current components. The model is applicable to both air-core accurate when the tilt angle becomes larger, which happens

1661
 TABLE II Axes of symmetry
C OMPARISON OF C ALCULATED AND S IMULATED D C W INDING L OSS
s
dc resistance Toroid 1 Toroid 2 Toroid 3
simulated (mΩ) 3.31 24.0 105
d
calculated with F 0 (mΩ) 4.34 24.7 107
relative error with F 0 31% 3% 2% t
calculated with F (mΩ) 3.21 24.5 107 p
relative error with F 3% 2% 2%

4.5 Fig. 4. Example of 2D FEA simulations for a toroidal winding with radial
F current excitation. Symmetric boundaries are used to model the periodic multi-
4 turn structure. Colored shading in the winding represents current density.
F′

3.5
TABLE III
VARIABLES IN 2D FEA S IMULATIONS
angle factor

3
2.5
2 Y
1.5
1
45 10 15 20 25 30 32
N
Fig. 3. Angle factors as a function of number of turns N, given ri /ro =0.6.
The solid line is the angle factor (F ) introduced in this paper, and the dotted
line is the angle factor (F 0 ) introduced in [24].
when the number of turns is small, or when the ratio of ri to
ro approaches 1.
B. Winding Resistance Considering Non-Zero Spacing Be-
tween Turns
An actual winding has non-zero spacing between turns, as
shown in Fig. 2. The first effect of the turn spacing is that
it decreases the effective width of the winding traces. The
second effect is that ac current flows also on the side edge of
the turn, thus changing the ac winding resistance calculated
based on the assumption that the ac current flows uniformly in
one skin depth of the winding. The first effect can be √corrected
by replacing√ro and ri in (1)–(3) with ro0 = ro − w 2πF N and
ri0 = ri − w 2πF N . The angle factor remains the same as (4).
To account for the second effect of the winding gap, we
used a curve-fit method proposed in [26]. 2D FEA simulations,
as shown in Fig. 4, were performed in COMSOL over a
wide range of geometries, and the resulting ac resistance was
tabulated for interpolation. The range of the variables of the
geometries is listed in Table III. s and t are the width and
thickness of the winding, d is the vertical space between
windings, and p is the pitch of the symmetric geometry. The
total number of simulations is 45,000. Once the look-up table
is obtained by 2D FEA, the interpolation of the table to get
the resistance of any design in the simulated range is fast and
thus can be effectively used in iterative design optimizations.
The change of the width of the toroid winding from the outer
variable definition range number of data points
X s/p 0.3 ∼ 0.98 15
d/δ 1 ∼ 100 10
Z t/δ 0.1 ∼ 10 20
V p/δ 10 ∼ 500 15
radius to inner radius needs to be included when applying
the simulated resistance into the toroid ac winding resistance
calculation. For a given design as shown in Fig. 2a, at a radius
r between ri and ro , the resistance per unit length can be
interpolated by using the look-up table of resistances simulated
by 2D FEA. By integrating the resistance from ri and ro , one
can obtain the ac winding resistance of the geometry shown
in Fig. 2a considering the non-uniform ac current distribution.
C. Radial and Circumferential Currents
The current in the toroidal winding can be decomposed
into a radial and a circumferential component [22]. The radial
current component (called the poloidal current in [22]) induces
the main field inside the toroid, and flows on the interior
surface of the winding with high-frequency excitations. The
radial current refers to the current that flows radially in the
top and bottom conductor layers and vertically in the inner
and outer via portions of the winding. The circumferential
current component (called the toroidal current in [22]) induces
the leakage dipole field outside the toroid, and flows on
the exterior surface with high-frequency excitations. With dc
or low-frequency ac current excitations, the currents flow
uniformly in the winding, and thus the net current follows the
winding path. In this situation, combining the radial current
associated resistances ((1) to (3)) with non-zero turn spacing
correction and the angle factor (4) will give an accurate
winding resistance. With high-frequency ac current excitations,
the currents become nonuniform (radial interior current and
circumferential exterior current) due to skin effects. In this
situation, an angle factor may not be accurate enough; thus
we can calculate resistances associated with radial current and
circumferential current separately. The model of radial current
associated resistance is discussed in Section II-B (without the

1662
 Center axis of symmetry
magnetic-core toroids was used. The process consists of PCB
technology for the top and bottom winding layers and vias
electroplated after sandwiching the magnetic core between the
two conductor layers.
Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 show a schematic and photo of the hybrid
fabrication process, which includes the following procedures:
Fig. 5. 2D FEA simulation of the circumferential current component in a
toroid, which induces a radial field. Colored shading in the winding represents 1) Winding layout in PCB: The top and bottom windings
current density; field lines are shown outside the toroid. were fabricated in a polyimide substrate using a standard
TABLE IV PCB process, with a total board thickness of about
C OMPARISON OF C ALCULATED TO S IMULATED AC W INDING L OSS 100 µm and a copper thickness of 18 µm, as shown in
Fig. 7b. A trace network was also patterned in the bottom
ac resistance (5 MHz) Toroid 1 Toroid 2 Toroid 3 winding substrate providing electrical connections for
simulated (mΩ) 6.29 36.6 143
electroplating.
2) Via electroplating: Most of the conductor area on the
calculated (mΩ) 5.92 36.2 145
bottom substrate is covered by a polyimide overlay, but
relative error 5.9% 1.1% 1.4%
pads are left open to allow via growth. Copper was
ac resistance (10 MHz) Toroid 1 Toroid 2 Toroid 3 electroplated on top of the exposed pads, as shown in
simulated (mΩ) 8.88 51.6 198 Fig. 7c.
calculated (mΩ) 8.54 50.5 197 3) Via polishing: The top of the electroplated pads were
relative error 3.8% 2.1% 0.5% polished down to provide a flat surface, as shown in
Fig. 7d.
ac resistance (20 MHz) Toroid 1 Toroid 2 Toroid 3 4) Fabricating the toroidal core: Radial-anisotropy toroidal
simulated (mΩ) 12.2 73.5 282 cores were fabricated separately using the method dis-
calculated (mΩ) 12.2 71.3 276 cussed in [18], [19], and then dropped in the toroidal
relative error 0% 3.0% 2.1% winding for integration, as shown in Fig. 7e. Co-Zr-O
nanogranular magnetic material was magnetron sput-
tered on top of 50-µm-thick alumina substrates, which
angle factor as the current path is radial). Similarly, a series were laser cut into toroidal shapes before sputtering.
of 2D FEA simulations of the geometry shown in Fig. 5 Magnetic orientation fixtures were built to provide an
has been performed to obtain a look-up table for resistance in-plane radial magnetic field during the deposition to
associated with circumferential current for interpolation. The induce radial anisotropy [18], [19]. The outer radius of
sum of the resistances associated with radial current and the fabricated toroidal core is 2.8 mm, and inner radius
with circumferential current gives the total winding resistance. is 1.7 mm. Toroidal cores with 10-µm-thick and 40-
Similar to the angle factor, the resistance associated with µm-thick magnetic films were developed. Fig. 8 shows
circumferential current is most important for toroids with a photograph of fabricated 40-µm thin-film Co-Zr-O
a small number of turns, because the resistance associated radial-anisotropy toroidal cores.
with radial current is proportional to N 2 , while the resistance 5) Connecting the top layer of winding: In the top winding
associated with circumferential current is independent of N . layer, holes are drilled in the via area. Copper was
electroplated through the holes connecting the via and
D. Comparison of Proposed Winding Resistance Model to 3D top winding, as shown in Fig. 7f. For flexible substrates,
FEA Simulations it is important to attach the top winding layer closely
By combining the loss models discussed from Section II- to the bottom layer in order to have a small distance
A to Section II-C, we obtain accurate winding loss models between the via surface and the top conductor pads
for toroids. The winding resistances of toroids are compared during electroplating.
with FEA simulations (MAXWELL 3D), both in dc and ac
(5 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz) excitations. Parameters of IV. M EASUREMENT R ESULTS
the three examples of the tested toroids are listed in Table I.
A. 40-µm Thin-Film Toroidal Core Measurements
Simulated and calculated dc resistances are listed in Table II.
Simulated and calculated ac resistances are shown in Table IV. A total magnetic material thickness of 40 µm per toroidal
It can be seen that across the tested examples, the improved substrate was obtained by depositing 20 µm on each side of
winding resistance model matches FEA within several percent the substrate. The complex permeability (µr = µ0r − jµ00r )
for both dc and ac resistances. of the 40-µm thin-film toroidal cores was measured with an
impedance analyzer (Agilent 4991A). The core permeability
III. FABRICATION is extracted from impedance measurements of a test fixture
A 4-turn toroidal inductor has been designed and fabri- (equivalent to a 1-turn toroid) with and without the toroidal
cated. A hybrid fabrication process for fabricating low-profile core. Details of the measurement method are described in [18],

1663
 µ′
r
Cross section of half of the toroid 1000
µ′′
1. Bottom winding of the toroid patterned r
Copper Polyimide Magnetic core
in a 1-layer PCB. Pads are not covered by 100 Q

relative permeability
polyimide for via growth.

10
2. Electroplating the vias

3. Polishing after the via plating 1

0.1
4. Dropping the magnetic core.

0.01
5. Covering the top layer of winding (1- 10 100 1000
layer PCB) by electroplating. f (MHz)

Fig. 6. Hybrid fabrication process steps for the toroidal inductor. Fig. 9. Measured complex permeability of fabricated 40-µm thin-film radial-
anisotropy toroidal cores.

[27]. Fig. 9 shows the measured real and imaginary parts of

Pads for via growth Core position
(a) Step 0: layout design
(b) Step 1: bottom conductors
the complex relative permeability, from 10 MHz to 1 GHz. As
can be seen from Fig. 9, the resonant frequency of the core is
close to 1 GHz. The real part of the relative permeability is
over 40 below the resonant frequency. The measured quality
factor (ratio of real to imaginary relative permeability) of the
toroidal core is higher than 100 at frequencies below 100 MHz.
B. Air-Core Toroidal Inductor Small-Signal Measurements
4-turn air-core toroids were built using the fabrication
process shown in Section III. Inductance of an air-core toroid
can be calculated as [9], [22]

La =Li + Lo
· ¸
(c) Step 2: via electroplating (d) Step 3: via polishing N 2 hµ0 ro µ0 (ro + ri ) 8(ro + ri ) (5)
= ln + ln −2 ,
2π ri 2 r o − ri
where µ0 is the permeability in free space, Li represents
the energy stored inside the toroid due to the radial current
component, and Lo represents the energy stored outside the
toroid due to the circumferential current component. Lo is
estimated as the inductance of a single-turn wire loop. For
(e) Step 4: dropping the (f) Step 5: connecting the
toroidal core top layer of winding toroids with a large number of turns, Li is much grater than
Lo , and Lo can often be neglected. However, for the built
Fig. 7. Photos of each step in the fabrication process. 4-turn toroid here, Lo is even larger than Li .
As is shown in Fig. 10, inductance and resistance of the
air-core toroid were measured from 1 MHz to 1 GHz with
an impedance analyzer. The height of the measured toroidal
inductor is about 350 µm. The measured inductance is 3.9 nH
at 1 MHz. The modeled inductance of the air-core toroid based
on (5) is 4.5 nH. The comparison of the modeled resistance
(developed in Section II) and the measured resistance is also
given in Fig. 10. The measured winding resistance is much
larger than the modeled values. Part of the discrepancy is
from the non-ideal resistivity obtained from the electroplated
copper. Part of the discrepancy is from the difference of the
Fig. 8. Photo of 40-µm Co-Zr-O radial-anisotropy cores (ro =2.8 mm, modeled and actual winding geometries, as shown in Fig. 11.
ri =1.7 mm).
The fabricated winding has large inner and outer via pads,
as can be seen in Fig. 7. The dipole leakage flux created

1664
 10 10
air-core toroid
8

L (nH)
measured
magnetic-core toroid with 10-µ m thick core
5

L (nH)
6
4
0
2 1 10 100 1000
0 f (MHz)
1 10 100 1000
f (MHz) 1
air-core toroid

R (Ω)
1 magnetic-core toroid with 10-µ m thick core
measured 0.1
modeled
0.1 simulated with actual geometry
R (Ω)

0.01
1 10 100 1000
0.01 f (MHz)
60
0.001 air-core toroid
1 10 100 1000 40 magnetic-core toroid with 10-µ m thick core
f (MHz)

Q
20
Fig. 10. Small-signal measurements of inductance and resistance of a 0
1 10 100 1000
fabricated air-core toroid (dot). Modeled resistance (circle) and simulated f (MHz)
resistance with the actual geometry (star) are also shown.
Fig. 12. Small-signal measurements of inductance, resistance, and quality
Inner and factor of a fabricated air-core toroid (dash dot) and a magnetic-core toroid
outer vias with a 10-µm-thick toroidal core (solid line).

1000

Connection pads 100

relative permeability
(a) Modeled 4-turn (b) Fabricated 4-turn toroidal
toroidal winding winding geometry µ′r (extrcted from the toroid measurements)

geometry 10
µ′′r
Q
µ′r (measured with test fixture)
Fig. 11. 3D models of the ideal and fabricated 4-turn toroidal inductors. µ′′r
Q

by the circumferential current travels through the vias and

introduces extra eddy-current loss. 3D FEA simulation was
0.1
used to obtain the resistance of the actual winding geometry. 10 100 1000
f (MHz)
Simulated resistances of the actual geometry at 5 MHz and
10 MHz are shown in Fig. 10. By using a finer fabrication Fig. 13. Extracted relative permeability of the 10-µm-thick toroidal core from
process (e.g. photolithography process), the toroidal winding measured impedances of air-core and magnetic-core toroids (dot) compared
to the relative permeability of the 10-µm-thick toroidal core measured by the
can better approximate the modeled winding geometry with 1-turn test fixture (circle).
thin vias.

C. Magnetic-Core Toroidal Inductor Small-Signal Measure-

ments
4-turn magnetic-core toroids with 10-µm-thick toroidal
cores were fabricated. Inductance, resistance, and quality
factor of the magnetic-core toroidal inductor was measured
from 1 MHz to 1 GHz, as shown in Fig. 12 in comparison
with the air-core toroid impedances. From Fig. 12, it can
be seen that the magnetic-core toroid has an increase in
inductance and quality factor compared to the air-core toroid at
frequencies below 100 MHz. The inductance increase is only
about 25%. This is because the number of turns of the toroid
is too small, and the radial current associate inductance Li is
small compared to the circumferential associated inductance
Lo (defined in (5)). The magnetic core directly increases Li ,
but Lo is not impacted. Given other parameters the same, a 16-
turn magnetic-core toroid with 10-µm-thick core is expected
to show an inductance increase by as much as 150% (2.5x)
compared to a 16-turn air-core toroid. The magnetic-core
inductance can be calculated as
N 2 µ0 (µ0r − 1)hc roc
Lm = La + ∆L = La + ln , (6)
2π ric
where La is the air-core inductance (5), ∆L is the inductance
difference between the magnetic-core toroid and the air-core
toroid given the same winding geometry, µ0r is the real part
of the relative permeability of the magnetic core, hc is the
magnetic core thickness, and roc and ric are outer and inner
radius of the core. Based on impedance measurements of both
air-core and magnetic-core toroids, the complex permeability
of the magnetic core can be extracted [27]. Fig. 13 shows
the extracted relative permeability of the 10-µm-thick toroidal
core from impedance measurements shown in Fig. 12 com-
pared to the relative permeability of the 10-µm-thick toroidal
core measured by the 1-turn test fixture. As can be seen from
Fig. 13, both measurement results match very well, except for
frequencies higher than 300 MHz where the 4-turn toroidal
inductor approaches self resonance.

1665
 60
air-core toroid
magnetic-core toroid with 10-µ m thick core (measured)
50 magnetic-core toroid with 40-µ m thick core (estimated)
magnetic-core toroid with 80-µ m thick core (estimated)
40
Q of inductor
30
20
10
0 opportunities,” in IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, Sep.
1 10
f (MHz)
Fig. 14. Estimated quality factor of a magnetic-core toroidal inductor with
thicker magnetic material (40 µm and 80 µm) based on the measurements of
the magnetic-core toroidal inductor with 10-µm-thick core and the air-core
toroidal inductor.
Based on the measured impedance of the air-core toroid
and the magnetic-core toroid with a 10-µm-thick core, we
estimated how the inductor quality factor would scale with
a thicker core. Fig. 14 shows the estimated inductor quality
factor with a 40-µm-thick toroidal core and with an 80-µm-
thick toroidal core, using the same 4-turn winding. With an
80-µm-thick core, the inductor quality factor is expected to
be higher than 40. As we discussed in Section IV-B, with a
higher number of turns and/or an improved winding fabrication
process, the quality factor is expected to be even higher.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, an improved winding resistance model for
toroids is developed. The model takes into account an angle
factor for actual windings, spacing between turns, and loss
associated with radial currents and circumferential currents.
This improved model shows high accuracy for tested toroids
examples compared to 3D FEA, within a several percent for
both dc and ac resistances. This is similar to the performance
of the model in [22], and offers an alternative formulation that
may be preferred in some implementations. An inexpensive
hybrid fabrication process for integrating separately-deposited
toroidal cores into toroidal windings is presented. Prototype
air-core and magnetic-core toroids using this process were
fabricated and tested at small-signal levels. 40-µm radial-
anisotropy toroidal cores show promising performance from
small-signal permeability measurements, and are expected to
have good performance in a magnetic-core toroid.
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