Surface-Mount Device

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What Does Surface-Mount Device Mean?

A surface-mount device (SMD) is an electronic device whose components are placed or mounted onto the surface of the printed circuit board (PCB). This method of manufacturing electronic circuit boards is based on the surface-mount technology (SMT), which has largely replaced the through-hole technology (THT) especially in devices that need to be small or flat. Compared to the latter, SMT allows both sides of a PCB to be used when required.

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Techopedia Explains Surface-Mount Device

The most common example of an SMD is the smart phone. It has components that need to be packed very tightly in a very slim case, so it is not feasible to use THT components. The latter also take up space at the bottom of or behind the PCB since that is where they are soldered, resulting in pointy tips where the solder meets the leads. SMT components can be smaller than THT components since they can have either smaller leads or no leads at all, which makes it easier to shrink the components down.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.