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0 ohm resistors?

Hello all,

  Can someone please explain to me why do circuits have a 0 ohm resistor instead of a trace?  Is it for testing, say there was a resistor with some value that was not needed.. so instead of refabricating the board, a 0 ohm is put in place?

 

Thank you,

 

Amer

  • Hi Amer,

    The use of 0 Ohm resistor differs from application to application.

    While the primary use of 0 Ohm resistors is,as you suggest, avoiding incurring PCB refabrication costs if a trace connection is faulty, it also has uses in finalising certain signal integrity issues during research.

    1. Example, use of series termination resistors for high speed signals, may require 0 Ohm resistors, if one is not sure about the performance of the signal.

    2. Separation of Analog GND and digital GND in ADCs.

    But primarily, it avoids use of jumpers and refabrication of the PCBs in case of faulty performance.

    Regards,

    Sid