Board-to-board connectors feature EMI shielding

Molex announced the availability of the Molex Quad-Row Shield Connector, featuring the industry’s first space-saving, four-row signal pin layout with a metal electromagnetic interference (EMI) shield. Quad-Row Shield Connector achieves up to 25dB reduction in EMI compared to non-shielded Quad-Row, and is ideally suited for space-constrained applications, such as smart watches and other wearables, mobile devices, AR/VR applications, laptops, gaming devices, appliances, and more.

First released in July 2020, Molex’s game-changing, patented Quad-Row Board-to-Board connectors are an industry standard for space savings, with a 30% size reduction over dual row connector designs. The new Quad-Row Shield builds on the market-proven, Quad-Row layout with the addition of an EMI shield that mitigates both electromagnetic and radio frequency (RF) interference, as well as signal integrity issues that create undue noise, achieving up to 25dB reduction in EMI over the non-shielded Quad-Row solution. The new, built-in EMI shield is a critical value-add for device designers striving to ensure stable, error-free signal performance in space-constrained device designs.

Molex’s long-standing collaboration with product developers from major device and gaming manufacturers supports continued enhancements, including the development of the new EMI shielding. Together, Molex and its customer engineering teams addressed the most significant requirements related to signal interference and incremental power requirements, specifically how best to achieve 80 times the signal connections and four times the power delivery compared to a single-pin connector. The new Quad-Row Shield provides power input and output aligned to a delivery model featuring up to 80 pins within a single board-to-board connector. In addition, S-parameter input specifications may be assigned to a preferred pin layout in an 80-pin signal design.

The highly innovative Quad-Row Shield significantly reduces electromagnetic interference and meets stringent EMI/EMC standards to lower regulatory testing burdens and speed product approvals. The shielding feature also enables error-free communication while seamlessly supporting operations and maintenance requirements to boost overall system uptime.

Molex Quad-Row Shield samples are available now to support custom inquiries, and commercial availability will follow in Q2 2026.