In the field of integrated circuit technology, a number of passive devices may be physically and electrically coupled to a substrate such as a printed circuit board (PCB). Such passive devices may include capacitors which may serve a number of purposes including, for example, providing a source of transient power, filtering, signal decoupling, generating oscillation, and fine-tuning. In most instances, these capacitors may be coupled to a PCB surface, by a surface-mount method or by pin connection.
Although surface mounting of capacitors may work well for some applications, the trend toward increasing capacitance demands as well as the ubiquitous shrinking of packages and boards may render current capacitance solutions problematic. With respect to increasing capacitance capability, such an increase can be accomplished by only a few methods including, for instance, increasing the face size of capacitor plates and/or decreasing the space between the capacitor plates. Clearly, increasing the face size of the capacitor plates may run counter to the decreasing size of packages and boards. In addition, current technology may have reached its limit with regard to decreasing the space between capacitor plates.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds