Over the recent years many people have been trying to reduce the size and weight of magnetic components and thus the overall system [ 19 ]. One attempt at this is to increase the switching frequency of the system. However, this attempt has its limitations due to increased device switching losses. Device limitations usually confine this frequency to lower value than is desired. An effective approach, reducing the size and weight is to use the planar magnetics for possible integration with the power circuit and thus eliminating the associated interconnections. Planar magnetics uses the printed circuit board as the windings. This will allow the magnetic component to be implemented into the circuit. The integration of the magnetic components and power circuit will decrease the number of connections, reduce the height, and ensure the parasitic repeatability. Having external connections can cause problems in the system. In this case the system must carry a large amount of current. The connections can cause heating from resistance and inductance of the connection. The planar approach also will decrease the height of the system. This is because the planar magnetic cores have a higher surface area with a decreased height. This can reduce the height of the system by 25 %- 50 % [ 19 ]. The parasitic repeatability is also a very important factor. In many cases the typology relies on the parasitic elements for energy storage. Since, the parasitic elements are mainly a result from the geometry of the system; and the planar system has the windings made from the printed circuit board, the parasitic elements will be very consistent through the manufacturing process. For topologies that rely on the parasitic elements for soft switching, the planar design can incorporate parasitic elements with the leakage components for the soft-switching requirement. This thesis redefines the conventional term of leakage inductance as the sum of a set of lumped parasitic inductances and the transformer leakage inductance for the integrated planar magnetics and inverter power circuitry. For the conventional non-integrated transformer, either planar or non-planar, the leakage inductance is defined between two terminals of the transformer. However, for the integrated planar magnetics, the new lumped parasitic and leakage inductance should include the inverter switch and dc bus interconnections. The transformer was first designed using a closed-form solution for a known geometry with different copper thickness. The calculated leakage inductance was then verified with finite element analysis and the impedance analyzer measurement. It was found that the theoretical calculation and the finite element analysis results agreed very well, but the measurement was more than one order of magnitude higher. This prompted the study of interconnect parasitics. With geometrical structure and proper termination and lumping, a set of parasitic inductances were defined, and the results were verified with measurements of both impedance analyzer and phase-shifted modulated full-bridge inverter testing. In addition to parasitic inductance analysis, the flux distribution and associated thermal performance of the planar structure were also studied with finite element analysis. The resulting plots of flux distribution and temperature profile indicate the key locations of mechanical mounting and heat sinking. Overall the thesis covers essential design considerations in electrical, mechanical, and thermal aspects for the planar magnetics integration. / Master of Science