New Industry Products

Murata Electronics Launches NTC Thermistors For Cellular Phones

November 27, 2000 by Jeff Shepard

Murata Electronics North America Inc. (Smyrna, GA) has launched a new line of 0201-packaged negative-temperature-coefficient (NTC) thermistors that the company maintains are among the smallest chip thermistors available.

Aside from benefits such as a short lead time and miniature size, Kozo Kagawa, Murata's group product manager, claims that the NTC thermistor has several other engineering design advantages. He cites the device's unusual inner construction, which is intended to make the lead-free NTC thermistor suitable for high-density mounting in general circuits. Termination is accomplished with a nickel barrier. In addition, Kagawa claims that the 0201-size chip has good solderability, and that reflow soldering is possible, as well as high, long-time aging stability.

Measuring 0.6mm x 0.3mm, the new components provide temperature compensation of transistor, IC and crystal oscillators in mobile communications equipment. Temperature compensation and sensing are also provided for LCDs, car audio equipment and rechargeable batteries. Currently, resistance values of 10,000ohms are available, with values to be expanded in the future.

The parts are already in mass production and “Murata will increase the manufacturing capability of all the SMT-package NTC thermistors by as much as 50 percent by March," said Kagawa. He quoted the availability of the components as eight to ten weeks. Pricing ranges from $0.19 to $0.21 cents each in 100,000-piece quantities.