Planar Components

Given just a substrate and conductive material, it is possible to fabricate resistors, capacitors and inductors. This post will briefly review some of the patterns currently used to create these components on printed circuit boards and integrated circuits.

While every trace on a printed circuit board has some resistivity, for a trace to exhibit a ratio much greater than one with the other traces, it has to be significantly longer than the others. Planar resistors can look just like the zigzagging symbol for a resistor. The second option for making resistors is to mix the conductive material in different ratios with the polymer. This would probably look like slightly discolored but otherwise identical fused filament.

American resistor symbol by Wikipedian K. Bolino (PD)

Fused filament fabrication with conductive filaments

Like the case was with a resistor, printing out the symbol for a capacitor with a conductive material can make a crude planar capacitor. More common in integrated circuits, however, is the metal-oxide semiconductor capacitor.

MOS Capacitor

Planar inductors are also possible to fabricate. Conductive material laid down in a spiral can function as an inductor.

Planar Inductor by Wikipedian Cyril Buttay (CC-BY-SA)

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