A little-known feature of DigiKey’s website search is the ability to use logical functions in conjunction with keywords or part numbers to perform a logic-based search. There are three main logic functions you can use on the website, though one of them requires a bit more effort. The two simple ones are OR, represented by the “|” sign, and NOT, represented by the “~” sign.
Say you’re looking to compare two specific part numbers on the DigiKey website, such as Murata’s GRM033R61A104ME15D and Samsung’s CL03A104KQ3NNNH. Normally this would involve a lot of hinky filtering to try and get these two parts on the same page so you could checkmark the ‘Compare’ box for them…or you could use the website’s ‘OR’ function, as shown here:
This search would return any result that fits either of the search terms used - in this case, the DigiKey part number for the two capacitors we want to compare. Clicking ‘Apply Filters’ with the above search brings us to a page that looks a bit like this:
Notice that the two capacitors we want to compare are now the only results in our search, which makes it very easy to check ‘Compare Parts’ on these two alone. Nice!
The other useful logic function one can make use of on DigiKey’s website search is NOT. Let’s say we’re looking for ceramic capacitors of a lot of various specs and ratings, but we don’t want to see anything that requires epoxy mounting since we’re using reflow processes on our boards. Normally this would be a finicky search requiring you to select a lot of different values in a lot of different filters, but fortunately a ‘NOT’ logic search can rescue us from hours of tedium. Simply type “~epoxy” into the website’s search function, as shown here:
Similarly to the OR search above, clicking ‘Apply Filters’ will bring us to a page in which our search term has been executed, which will look a bit like this:
Notice that ‘Epoxy Mountable’ as a feature has been completely eliminated from our results table, since we specified that any search result with the word ‘epoxy’ in it - including in any filter on the DigiKey site - is to be discarded. Now we can search for the other capacitors we need freely without having to worry about accidentally selecting epoxy-mounted caps we can’t use. Awesome!
Additionally, you can use the “Search Within Results” box on the website to hoodwink the site into an ‘AND’ logic search. Let’s say we’re looking for Low ESL capacitors, but they also need to have a High Voltage callout. We can do this through cherry-picking filters if we want, or we can do it logically with a repeated “Search Within Results” search. First of all, we need to locate the “Search Within Results” field in the DigiKey website, here:
Once we have it, we enter the first of the search terms we’d like to AND, in this case ‘LOW ESL’, and click Apply Filters:
Notice that ‘LOW ESL’ has been added to our list of filters, as shown. Second, we need parts that are also High Voltage-rated. We can do this by typing ‘HIGH VOLTAGE’ into the same “Search Within Results” field and clicking Apply Filters.
Notice that now both ‘LOW ESL’ and ‘HIGH VOLTAGE’ have been applied as separate filters in the search, imitating the effects of an ‘AND’ logic search and culling our remaining results down to only those capacitors which have both of the callouts we need. Excellent!
These three logic search features can really help speed up searches on the DigiKey website, or assist you in honing in on exactly what you need to find quickly. I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me, and happy searching.