Estimate inductor Q factor, for thin layer.

[SK245230]

Hi, I want to estimate the Q factor of inductors on PCB.
My inductor would have an outer diameter of 4cm and 10 turns. The thickness of copper on PCB is 35um.
I tried to do a 3D FEM simulation with COMSOL, but I had some troubles because it was hard to mesh it correctly. Indeed, for simulating Q factor you need a very fine meshing and as I have a thickness of 35um for a 4cm coil, the number of mesh is very high. Plus COMSOL isn't a very friendly tool, so it's hard to mesh it correctly.

So my question is not about how to mesh my coil in COMSOL, but more general, if I am going in the right direction.
What I want, is to design a coil on PCB with the right Q factor. So for that I need a way to estimate it.

Maybe I am doing the wrong simulation and there is a simplest way for estimating it.
Maybe I should use another simulator for doing that (HFSS, EmPro, MOMENTUM, Sonnet).
Maybe it's impossible to simulate what I want.
What do you think?

 

[Hamid.Kiumarsi]

Hi,

Since your circuit is planar, you will get good results using Momentum. I got OK results for on-chip inductors some years ago.

 

[smijesh]

Quality factor(Q) = 2*π*F*L/R F frequency ,L Inductance , R resistance of the coil

If you increase the copper thickness the resistance of the coil increase hence better Q value

COMSOL Have capability to predict Q factors of coil at high frequency

https://www.comsol.co.in/model/rf-coil-6126

 

[anilkrpandey]

To estimate inductor Q factor you can use either Momentum (Method-of-moment) or FEM (Finite-element-method) based solver. In momentum, there is already template to calculate Q factor from S-parameter data.