What are the technical difficulties of chip inductors used in AI?

In the field of materials, we carefully design and develop the shape of wires to meet the needs of chip inductors, and then hand them over to professional wire manufacturers for processing. As for the magnetic core, it constitutes the core focus of our research and development work.

As technology moves towards high frequency, the frequency of current inductors has climbed to the MHz level, which puts more stringent requirements on the materials used. Future research on magnetic materials will focus on how to achieve more precise regulation at the material level to effectively reduce eddy current losses and improve magnetic permeability.

Metal powder cores have achieved leapfrog development in the past two decades, and their losses have continued to decrease, gradually approaching the loss standards of ferrite materials. Ten years ago, the idea of using metal powder cores in MHz-level scenarios seemed out of reach. Today, the industry is undergoing a profound transformation, and the future development prospects of metal powder cores are extremely broad.

On the other hand, as the thickness of inductor products continues to decrease, process challenges are becoming increasingly prominent.

The reduction in the size of inductor products makes it more difficult to control the yield during the molding process, and it is more likely to produce defective products during the sintering stage. How to efficiently and accurately detect these tiny inductors has become a very challenging task, requiring us to continuously optimize and upgrade the processes and equipment of inductors.

At present, metal magnetic powder core integrated inductors use special pressing and sintering processes. This is because the magnetic powder core must go through these two processes to meet the magnetic permeability and loss indicators. Looking forward to the future, if the product develops from millimeter level to micron level, photolithography may become an alternative, but for now, the realization of this technical path still faces great difficulties.

At the equipment level, many devices in the field of chip inductors need to be customized, and it is difficult to directly purchase standard products. Even the so-called AI detection technology requires continuous training and optimization of the system.

It is precisely because of these high-difficulty challenges that the number of chip inductor companies that currently use the metal magnetic powder core copper-iron co-firing technology route is scarce. Companies need to gather experts in the fields of materials, inductors and equipment to work together on this innovative cause.