MLCC World-Wide Shortages drive increased demand for Empower Semiconductor E-CAP™ Capacitor Technology: The Highest Performance, Smallest Size, and Most Configurable Capacitor Technology Platform Ever!
Milpitas, Calif., February 2021 — Empower Semiconductor, the world leader in Integrated Voltage Regulators (IVR), today announced it is increasing production of its E-CAP silicon capacitor technology. E-CAP is a vastly superior performing capacitor, far exceeding the semiconductor industry’s previously leading Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitors (MLCC), which is amidst another significant supply chain shortage. The MLCC market was estimated at $8.4B in 2018.
MLCC’s are space limiting, inefficient, unreliable, and low performing when compared to E-CAP. Empower Semiconductor has made the most significant advancement for capacitors in decades as E-CAP enables new possibilities for today’s applications due to the incredible size reduction, performance increase, and improved reliability. MLCC’s are also prone to material shortages and pricing volatility as witnessed most recently. The E-CAP silicon capacitor product platform can alleviate supply shortages with the added performance and reliability benefits.
“Since we launched E-CAP in late 2020 there has been unprecedented demand for our technology by industry leaders in mobile and data center products. More recently we have received increased demand due to the supply shortage of MLCC products” said Steve Shultis, Senior Vice President WW Sales and Marketing at Empower Semiconductor. “We knew our performance was winning and the added benefit of our supply chain has created a tremendous surge in demand for E-CAP.”
E-CAP can be an ideal replacement of MLCC products as a power supply bypass capacitor in low voltage DC/DC voltage regulators and in-package for SoC’s and Processors. Empower Semiconductor’s silicon capacitor technology features superior stability with no DC or AC bias de-rating, no temperature de-rating, and no significant effects of aging. Combined with the ultra-low ESL (<15pH), E-CAP provides a highly simplified and reliable solution to the system designer. This highly differentiated high-performance technology is available in configurations up to 8.4 microfarad for operating voltages under 5V. Height limited applications are addressed with the capability of less than 100µm in thickness. This tiny die format allows for footprints that are 80% smaller than equivalent MLCC based solutions.
E-CAP is currently offered in two standard products with additional configurations coming soon. The EC1001 is a 220nF low ESR/ESL silicon capacitor in an 0402 package. It can be used as a replacement for common MLCC values of 0.1 microfarad/0.22 microfarad/0.47microfarad. The EC1100 is a 620nF silicon capacitor array (2.5 x 0.6mm) comprising 5 capacitors that can be combined or used individually. Both products are available as 150microfarad thickness in Tape & Reel.
Empower’s EP70XX IVR family, which is known for its superior performance and unmatched power density, was the first application for E-CAP. Empower has mastered the expertise of leveraging the superior characteristics of the technology to provide its size benefits to a variety of implementations such as die, package, and PCB substrates. The performance benefits allow higher power efficiency to be achieved due to the superior voltage filtering for better SoC/CPU voltage accuracy during load transients.
E-CAP opens up demanding new applications in IoT, wearables, mobile, and processors where size, performance, and flexibility are essential.
Availability: E-CAP product range and details are available at https://www.empowersemi.com/ecap-new-capacitor-silicon-revolution/
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