Exponentially Shrinking Electronic Components

 Electronics  

While everyone is familiar with Moore's Law effect on microprocessors, other electronic components are also shrinking at exponential rates.  Murata Manufacturing recently unveiled chip ferrite beads that are used in smartphones and wearable devices of the future.

Japanese company Murata Manufacturing has developed the world's smallest chip ferrite beads, which are 0201 size, with dimensions measuring 0.25 x 0.125mm. Chip ferrite beads are electronic components used in smartphones and other mobile devices. Their role is to eliminate noise from electronic equipment and prevent errors in operation.  The development of smaller electronic components goes hand-in-hand with Moore's Law.

"Compared with the 0402 size, which was the smallest available until now, these products have 75% smaller volume. The main application for this 0402 size is smartphones. A smartphone contains about 500 of these, or even more. So, by making each one smaller, the area needed overall can be reduced quite a lot," said a representative from Murata.

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Last year, Murata also developed similar sized monolithic ceramic capacitors and chip inductors. Even though they are incredibly small, systems which can mount them in devices are currently available, and Murata is working on mass production technology with the aim of providing samples this fiscal year.

Monolithic ceramic capacitors are assembled into all kinds of electronic devices and it is said that 400 to 500 of them are used in the latest smartphones. The number of electronic components used in compact mobile devices continues to increase to enable an increasingly greater number of features. The growth in size of mobile devices is not proportional to the increase in number of features, which means that volumetric efficiency is a key factor in product design. This is driving a growing need for ultra-small components that can support high-density mounting.

"The 0201 size monolithic ceramic capacitors we announced last year are so small, people asked us whether they could really be mounted in devices and mass-produced. Here, the capacitors are inside this glass, and there's a huge number in here. This is how we've made it possible to mass-produce them. This video shows them being mounted on a board, in collaboration with Fuji Machinery and Panasonic. Here's the actual board with the products mounted. It shows how these different sized capacitors can be mounted together."

"We think 0201 size components will be needed for future smartphone and wearable devices. They'll be essential in five or ten years' time, so such devices can have all kinds of capabilities, and be even more compact."



SOURCE  DigInfo News

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