Altium and Würth Elektronik collaborate on new component libraries - More than 1,500 passive components from Würth Elektronik available through AltiumLive

Würth Elektronik is Europe's largest manufacturer of EMC components, inductors, transformers, RF components and circuit protection devices. In a close collaboration between its passive components unit and Altium, they developed and prepared a full set of libraries for Würth Elektronik’s passive components that is ready to use within Altium Designer. All components in the Würth Elektronik libraries include the schematic symbol, the PCB footprint and a detailed 3D model for 3D mechanical integration during PCB design.

Frank Krämer, Technical Marketing Director for Altium in EMEA, commented, “Altium is moving into a new model of partnership to provide third party libraries, templates, reference designs and other ready-to-use IP for our Altium Designer users. I believe this close collaboration between Altium and parts manufacturers will produce design IP that our customers can trust ‘out-of-the-box’, and adds significant value to being a member of the Altium design community. I am happy that we have Würth Elektronik on board to provide easy access to its high quality EMC components from the heart of Europe to our worldwide user base.”

Würth Elektronik’s Product Manager Christin Zierenner said, “We are happy to work closely and in partnership with Altium, because our customers are now able to easily access and re-use quality models for our components in the design process”.

Altium's collaboration with Würth Elektronik will extend beyond the initial component releases. The ongoing relationship will see the Würth Elektronik inventory kept up to date within the Altium vaults. As new parts are added or components updated in Würth Elektronik's catalogue, they will also be added or modified in the Altium vault. As parts are made obsolete, these parts will be marked as such in the vault. This will give Altium customers an almost 'real-time' insight into the Würth Elektronik component inventory, allowing more intelligent part decisions to be made during board design.

The libraries from Würth Elektronik will be available through Altium’s ‘Hobart Vault’, one of Altium’s managed library repositories of ready-to-use design components accessible through the AltiumLive portal. Altium Designer 10 users can access these components by connecting to the Hobart Vault directly from within their Altium Designer software using their AltiumLive credentials, or by browsing to the AltiumLive Design Content area and selecting the Altium Hobart Vault.

The library suite provides a choice of eight families of various passive components for different areas of applications comprising:

• EMC ferrites
• Filter inductors
• Common mode line filters
• Common mode power line chokes
• SMD power chokes
• THT power chokes
• Double chokes
• SMD high current chokes

The first two libraries to be released into the Hobart Vault are the EMC Ferrite and Filter Inductor families with additional families to follow on a weekly basis.

The EMC Ferrite library provides SMD ferrites, SMD ferrites for HF applications, VHF chokes, a kind of ‘choke array’ with a ferrite bridge and flat wire high current SMD ferrites as well as SMD power ferrites.

The EMC ferrites are based on a nickel-zinc material mixture. In a frequency range starting with 20MHz, the core material is optimized for small Q factors (Q <3) which equals to high loss. These occur in the core material and help to absorb electromagnetic interferences. The inductance of these components is kept low. The special miniature SMD multilayer ferrites have very good filtering properties and a low DC resistance. Placed close to the current source, maximum impedances of 1,000 Ohms can be achieved. The modified internal structure in the HF variant increases the effective bandwidth to eliminate interference to an extent that impedances at 3GHz are at least three times bigger. The usage of the ferrite bridge can be customized to either implement a dual current-compensated choke or to increase the impedance or the rated current.

The Filter Inductor library provides SMD multilayer inductors (0603-1206) and rod core chokes. With their compact design, multi-layer inductors achieve a small DC resistance. The external ferrite casing provides a magnetic shield, signal interference and crosstalk is reduced significantly. The device is particularly suited as in filters and resonant circuits, where low coupling and small packages are required. The rod core choke is not shielded and available in larger packages. The advantage of this design is the broad attenuation and the current capacity, up to 15A. Furthermore, this series is characterized by its high mechanical stability and an operating temperature range from -40 °C to +150 °C.

All components are available from Würth Elektronik ex stock. Samples are available free of charge