Empower introduces the highest performance, smallest and most configurable commercial capacitors in history

     Empower Semiconductor, a global leader in integrated voltage regulators (IVR), today announced a breakthrough in its highest performance, most configurable, and smallest commercial line of capacitors. E-CAP is an extremely superior capacitor, far superior to the semiconductor industry's previous leading multi-layer ceramic capacitor (MLCC).

     Capacitors are one of the most basic and fundamental components in electronic devices and are needed for energy storage and power supply voltage filtering. The capacitor industry has not developed nearly as fast as all other electronic technologies and has not met the needs of the semiconductor world. The current leading technology is MLCC, but they are space-constrained, inefficient, unreliable, and low-performance. E-CAP from Empower Semiconductor is changing all that. This is the most exciting advance for capacitors in decades, as it enables incredible size reduction, performance improvements and improved reliability, opening up new possibilities for today's applications.

     "We love power management innovation at Empower, and our team always aims to break down technical barriers to enable the next generation of applications. We have had tremendous customer demand and interest for our game-changing Empower IVR power IC technology, and now, once again, we have achieved a breakthrough in reimagining capacitors." "Said Steve Shultis, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Empower Semiconductor WW. During the development of our EP70XX IVR, we determined that off-the-shelf capacitor technology was inadequate for demanding applications. So we redesigned it to give it the performance we were looking for in terms of size and flexibility. We are excited to offer this technology to our partners."

     With game-changing capacitor density and flexibility, E-CAP™ technology allows capacitor banks of different values and sizes to be integrated onto a single chip. The E-CAP enables space-critical applications that cannot withstand massive capacitor intervals. Highly constrained applications can also be addressed with a thickness of much less than 100µm. This minimal bare chip format makes its footprint 80 percent smaller than comparable MLCC-based solutions.

     The E-CAP technology offers excellent stability with no DC or AC bias derating, no temperature derating, and no significant aging effects. Combined with ultra-low ESL (15pH), the E-CAP™ provides a highly simplified and reliable solution for system designers. This highly differentiated, high-performance technology can be used in configurations up to 8.4µF.

     Empower's EP70XX IVR series, known for its superior performance and unmatched power density, is the first application of E-CAP. Empower has the expertise to leverage the technology's superior features to provide size benefits for a variety of implementations, such as chips, packages, and PCB substrates. The performance advantage enables greater power efficiency, as superior voltage filtering improves SoC/CPU voltage accuracy during load transients.