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Ultra-Thin Capacitors
Smoltek has developed a prototype of the thinnest discrete capacitor in the world. Its total building height is less than 40 micrometers (38.2 µm to be exact). You have to stack a bunch of them on top of each other to reach the same height as today’s industry-standard regarding surface-mounted discrete capacitors. The capacitor, without encapsulation and substrate, is merely 0.5 to 10 µm in height. It can be built directly onto an integrated circuit’s die or built into its interposer. The most amazing thing about this microscopic capacitor is its performance. One square millimeter has a capacitance of a whopping 650 nanofarads (650 nF/mm2). Its internal resistance (ESR) is less than forty milliohms (40 mΩ), and its internal inductance (ESL) is below fifteen picohenry (15 pH).
We describe our capacitor as a CNF-MIM capacitor since it is a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor where carbon nanofibers (CNF) are used to create a much larger surface area, hence higher capacitance than the form factor suggests.
We are developing ultra-thin and high-performance nanofiber-based capacitors for mobile application processors. The driving voltage decreases in today’s processors because more and more transistors can fit on a given surface. The lower drive voltage makes the processors increasingly sensitive to interference, and a number of so-called decoupling capacitors are required to stabilize the power supply.
To increase performance and reduce power consumption, these capacitors must be placed as close to the processor chip as possible. For the capacitors to be placed as close to the processor chip as possible, they must be extremely thin. They must also be high-performance, i.e. stable at high frequencies and with low internal losses.
Our carbon nanotechnology makes it possible to manufacture capacitors with a unique combination of superior electrical performance at very high frequencies and an extremely small form factor—ultra-thin capacitors.
Smoltek’s upcoming product family for decoupling capacitors for the semiconductor industry is intended to be placed in the application processor chip.
- Solid-state construction
- Capacitance density: > 650 nF/mm2
- Equivalent series resistance (ESR): < 40 mΩ
- Equivalent series inductance (ESL): < 15 pH
- Breakdown voltage: Up to ~ 25 V
- Leakage current: ~ 4 mA/F
- Excellent capacitance stability up to 150 °C
A discrete CNF-MIM capacitor has a smaller footprint (area) and much thinner profile (z-dimension) than any other capacitor with the same capacitance. CNF-MIM capacitors up to more than 650 nF can be made less than 40 µm in height. The actual form factor can be varied according to the design and need.
As shown in the illustrations, a discrete CNF-MIM capacitor can be
- mounted on printed circuit board (PCB)
- embedded in PCB
- mounted on chip interposer
- embedded in chip interposer
- mounted on chip die
- Discrete CNF-MIM capacitors are compatible with wafer-to-wafer (W2W) or die-to-wafer bonding (D2W).