COST/BENEFIT TRADEOFFS OF CAPACITOR PART SIZE VS. MANUFACTURING EFFICIENCY

摘要

Even after decades of downsizing, passive components still take up approximately 70% of board space, making continued miniaturization a primary design concern. However, the pace at which miniature technology is adopted is dependent on how quickly manufacturers can reduce the cost of this process. With regard to passive components, the essence of both downsizing and reduced costs is volumetric efficiency. A common but overly simplistic approach to achieving capacitor cost savings is to shrink the size of a component for a given capacitance and voltage rating in hopes that the resultant material reduction will instantly diminish costs. However, material cost is only one factor of the total cost of component manufacturing. The R&D and process development costs required to achieve material downsizing often outweigh the gains, especially at the front-end of introduction. These costs diminish as the process matures, eventually enabling overall component cost savings, but results are far from immediate.