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Question regarding to application note AN530

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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I have refered to AN530 "Optimizing Impedance Discontinuity Caused by Surface Mount Pads for High-Speed Channel Designs". 

 

It is a great paper but only showing the test result based on caps with 0402 size, I am wondering would you let me know the testing result based on caps with 0201 size? 

 

please let us know what is the best cutout size for 0201 caps. 

 

Since there are no rooms on our board, we only can use 0201 caps. 

 

One more question: How to decide the centre to centre distance of those DC blocking caps? 

 

Many thanks.
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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I'm not aware of any test results specific to 0201 capacitors. However, I think the paper you refer to offers sufficient guidance as to how they chose the cutout size they ended up with with for 0402 caps. 

 

--- Quote Start ---  

The length of the cutout is always equal to the end-to-end distance of two surface mount pads... 

--- Quote End ---  

 

As for the width of the cutout, referring to figure 2 - this shows the behaviour for 0402 caps. I'd suggest you can correlate the width of an 0402 cap (and footprint) to the cutout width to give yourself a rule of thumb that you can apply to you 0201 caps. 

 

The paper goes on to discuss placing 

 

--- Quote Start ---  

The ground vias near the DC blocking capacitors... 

--- Quote End ---  

 

The closer the better. This will be determined by the particular board technology and vendor you use. Look to them for advice. 

 

As for the centre-to-centre distance - in the same way that you want the traces closely coupled, keep the caps close. Look to your CEM for guidance on how accurately they can place the caps and onto what size pads they're prepared to place 0201 caps. Then consider again the PCB technology and the required pad-to-pad clearance. 

 

Consider all these points and I think that'll get you to a suitable solution. 

 

Regards, 

Alex
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Many thanks for your great answer. 

 

Have a nice weekend. 

 

David.
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