Integrated active magnetic probe in silicon-on-insulator complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology

A novel magnetic probe has been designed and fabricated by 0.15 μm five-metal (4M + thick metal) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology to achieve both a high sensitivity and a high spatial resolution. A detecting coil having metal multilayers, a two-stage differential amplifier, a differential-to-single-ended converter, and an output buffer are integrated on a single chip. The probe is referred to as an active probe, and it has a feature to distinguish magnetic field from detected electromagnetic emissions by means of a two-turn differential coil structure and a circuit technique using a wideband differential-to-single-ended converter with a high common-mode rejection. Measurement results show the effectiveness of the active magnetic probe with the function of on-chip amplification and electric field suppression, as well as electrical switching with common-mode voltage (V_com). Moreover, for the first time, a magnetic field distribution is visualized with an active probe.