This paper proposes a new approach for the systematic synthesis of active inductors via signal-flow graphs (SFGs). The basic idea consists of proposing and using SFG stamps of active basic building blocks (ABBs) to construct the equivalent SFG of a classical inductor. We show that a large number of active inductors can be thus synthesized; twelve are proposed, most of them are novel. Known ABBs, as well as newly proposed ones are used, namely current conveyors (CC), operational transconductance amplifiers (OTA), current conveyor transconductance amplifiers (CCII-TA), current feedback operational amplifiers (CFOA), operational transresistance amplifiers (OTRA), current backward transconductance amplifiers (CBTA), current feedback transconductance amplifiers (CFTA) and voltage differencing inverting buffered amplifiers (VDIBA). SPICE simulations are given to show the viability of the proposed technique. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.