Does anybody has experience in submitting purely passive devices for characterization? Like, a standalone inductor plus RF pads, or a microstrip filter, etc

Yes, but not on sky130, and not using open source tools

I was wondering if someone did submit any passives on their tape-out. Specially if there's any RF pad design going on. Or any recommendations/guidelines for doing them.

The closest to an RF-ready pad frame is the

caravan

, which is really not meant to be used above a hundred MHz anyways. The PDK lacks enough information to extract meaningful simulations anyway. One idea @User and I were wondering about was using the chipIgnite program, building your own pad frame inside the user area, and having the fab pull your dies before bumping so that you can just wirebond to the pad directly

I think I'm a few steps behind thinking about packaging. What I had in mind is having some test circuits, bare die, that I could characterize in a VNA, or spectrum analyzer, for example. I work with research at mm-waves and the lower cost and open-source environment of the sky130 drew my interest (and I will start fiddling with some layouts once I finish untangling myself with the EDA tools, that is)

@User We have taped out inductors only in MPW1 and until now I didn't get my chips. https://github.com/mabrains/caravel_analog_rf

@User I surely will, thanks :) By the way, what was the intended operating frequency (or band) of your inductors?

@User No specific frequency. Just test patterns to evaluate the technology inductance capabilities.