Due to the aggressive price/performance quest of the expanding global FPD market, greatly increased numbers of IC chips are now required for the I/O, image processing and information processing circuits of flat panel displays. Power supply circuits are likewise increasingly used for each IC chip to more efficiently use power and lower overall consumption as much as possible. These circuits, however, require costly multi-layer boards that have grown in size due to the increase in the number of power supply circuits, a factor that has also driven up FPD prices. This has resulted in a corresponding demand for choke coils—the main component in DC-DC converters—with higher current capacity, lower DC resistance (RDC) and smaller physical size. Boosting current capability, however, requires increasing the size of the core and thickening the windings inside the inductor, both of which make reducing the device’s size very difficult.
TAIYO YUDEN responded to this design challenge by improving the round drum/sleeve core technology used by conventional inductor designs. A unique sleeveless, square-core winding was developed for use by the NR series inductors that successfully eliminated all wasted space and thickened the lead wire inside the inductor to achieve the lowest possible DC resistance.