State of the Art of Thin Film Components

The main reasons for the development of thin film technology are miniaturisation, reliability and high frequency applications. A comparison with conventional components, and with the demands of system engineers shows that the thin film resistor problem is solved and that there are thin film capacitors for many applications, whereas coils of only small values and low Q can be made. As the distances between thin film circuit elements can be extremely small, low conductor resistance between components is possible. The inherent advantages of thin film technology are good reliability because of fewer connections, the possibility of functional trimming, small TCR and TCC variation in a circuit, and TCR-TCC balancing. Furthermore parasitic effects can be well controlled, distributed elements realized and large scale integration carried out.