What is MLCC?

In recent years, the phenomenon that the market of passive components is in short supply has attracted market attention, especially MLCC. But what is the function of these electronic components?

The electronic components are divided into two types, active and passive, and the difference is whether power supply is required. The semiconductor components often discussed, such as transistors and diodes, are active components; Passive components, including resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc., are often regarded as supporting role on the motherboard. Non related people seldom know about them, but their technology development is also very important.

The function of the resistor is to adjust the current and voltage, while the inductor is to filter current noise, prevent electromagnetic interference, and stabilize the current. Capacitor is the main electrical energy storage element on the board, which performs coupling and coordination functions. These three passive components can be divided into ceramic capacitor, aluminum capacitor and tantalum capacitor according to the market scale of the capacitor. At present, the popular MLCC is the multilayer ceramic capacitor, also known as the chip capacitor.

What is MLCC

Multi-layer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) is one of the main passive chip components in the electronic complete machine. It was born in the 1960s and developed by American companies. Later, it developed and industrialized rapidly in Japanese companies (such as Murata Murata, TDK, solar induced electricity, etc.), and still maintains its advantages in the field of MLCC. The main performance is that MLCC has high reliability, high precision, high integration, high frequency Intelligent, low power consumption, large capacity, miniaturization and low cost.

MLCC - referred to as chip capacitor for short, is made of ceramic dielectric membranes printed with electrodes (inner electrodes), which are stacked in a staggered way, and then sintered at high temperature to form a ceramic chip, and then sealed with metal layers (outer electrodes) at both ends of the chip to form a structure similar to monolith, so it is also called monolith capacitor.

In addition to the continuity characteristics of the capacitor, MLCC has the characteristics of small size, large specific capacity, long service life, high reliability, and suitable for surface installation. With the rapid development of the world's electronic industry, chip capacitors, as the basic components of the electronic industry, are also developing at an amazing speed, increasing by 10% to 15% every year. At present, the demand for chip capacitors in the world is more than 200 billion, 70% of which come from Japan (such as Murata, a major MLCC manufacturer), followed by Europe, America and Southeast Asia (including China). With the improvement of the reliability and integration of the chip capacity products, the range of its use is becoming wider and wider, and it is widely used in various military and civilian electronic equipment. Such as computers, telephones, program-controlled switches, precision test instruments, radar communications, etc.

In fact, not only traditional electronic products need passive components, but also the automotive industry needs passive components very much. Especially in recent years, the popularity of new products such as electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles. In the past, a car needs to use nearly 2000 passive components. After entering the era of electric vehicles, the use of nearly 10000 passive components is also available. The demand cannot be underestimated. Not only MLCC, but also the delivery date of aluminum capacitors has been delayed to more than half a year, which can be said that the market is quite short.

MLCC industry distribution

At present, the main suppliers of passive components are Japan, such as Japan's Murata Institute, Semco, Sun-induced Power and East Electric Power. For example, nearly 70% of materials such as interface ceramic powder, ceramic substrate, alumina substrate, quartz substrate, conductive adhesive and cathode foil are also from Japan. In response to this trend, the Taiwan Industry Bureau also plans to assist the industry in obtaining key upstream material technologies, especially the production of advanced ceramics, so as to truly compete with Japanese factories.

At present, the main output value of Taiwan's passive component industry still lies in capacitors and resistors. Among the relevant industries, Guoju, which supplies materials such as resistors and capacitors, especially chip resistors, accounts for 34% of the market, and is the leading manufacturer. Huaxinke takes MLCC as the bulk, accounting for nearly 60% of its revenue. However, its products are quite diversified. Besides MLCC, there are also products such as chip capacity arrangement, chip assembly and RF components. Although Qilixin is also a passive component factory, its main business is inductance.