1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inductor, and more particularly, to a high-current inductor for removing noise that originates in electronic equipment or noise that enters electronic equipment, and a method of manufacturing such an inductor.
2. Description of the Related Art
With recent miniaturization and increases in the level of integration and in the frequency of circuits, there has been an increasing demand for miniature surface-mount inductors.
An example of this type of inductor is a multilayer inductor disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 57-39521. This multilayer inductor is manufactured by alternately stacking green sheets of ferrite and conductive patterns for forming a coil, baking them together, and making a multilayer unit that incorporates a coil composed of the coil conductive patterns electrically connected in series.
A conventional wire-wound inductor may also be manufactured by forming electrodes on a substrate for holding a magnetic core, winding a conductive wire on the magnetic core, and connecting terminals of the conductive wire to the electrodes on the substrate.
In the conventional methods of manufacturing the multilayer inductor, however, it is necessary to repeat a printing step many times, the manufacturing process is complicated and the manufacturing cost is high. Although the wire-wound inductor has a relatively simple structure, it is difficult to automate the operations of winding the conductive wire on the magnetic core, processing the terminals of the conductive wire, and soldering the processed terminals of the conductive wire to the electrodes on the substrate for holding the magnetic core. Therefore, these operations are manually performed which increases the manufacturing cost of the wire wound inductor.