Characterizing Hand-Made Planar Inductor Components in the Series RLC Circuit

In the introductory physics curriculum, students are taught induction and inductance by examining the behavior of the current-carrying coil. As electronic devices approach the nanoscale, one might ask a student how would it be possible to fit an inductor onto an electronic chip. A commercial microelectronics solution is the planar spiral inductor, which are conductive thin film patterns deposited on substrates especially used for high frequency applications. Although synthesizing a thin film is beyond the reach of most classrooms, the principles and advantages of a thin film inductor can be taught using very affordable copper tape. An instructional laboratory activity based on this design introduces students to inductors using a geometry not covered in the introductory text and also offers them insight into the solutions necessary to build devices at the micro- and nanoscale, which would especially be useful to careers in engineering and applied physics. In this work, we demonstrate the construction of macroscale planar spiral inductors using commercially available copper tape and compare their behavior to an off-the-shelf inductor.