Contents I. Introduction
Embedded passives, also known as “integral” passives, are passive components buried within the layers of an interconnecting substrate [the substrate is the electrical interconnection between the components, e.g., a printed circuit board (PCB)], [1]. Embedding passives frees the board surface area to either shrink systems or add more active devices and has the potential of increasing functionality and possibly performance in small electronic systems. Although capacitors, resistors, and inductors are all candidates for embedding, most current interests are focusing on capacitors and resistors since they represent the majority of passive devices used on a circuit board. A generic single board computer is generally composed of 5% integrated circuits, 4% connectors, 40% capacitors, 33% resistors, and 18% miscellaneous parts [2]. Embedded resistors and capacitors can be individually fabricated, and capacitors can also be manufactured in distributed planar form.
