Power plane

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In printed circuit board (PCB) design, a power plane is the counterpart to the ground plane and behaves as an AC signal ground, whilst providing DC voltage for powering circuits mounted on the PCB.

[edit] Uses

Where possible it is good to have a power plane for each ground plane on a board (known as a "plane pair"), as this reduces power supply impedance to the components on the board.

[edit] EDA design tool aspects

In electronic design automation (EDA) design tools, power planes (and ground planes) are usually drawn automatically as a negative layer. Adding primitives on such a layer produces a negative of those primitives, placing copper wherever there is no track or via.