17,000 free KiCad components for PCB designers

Open Source Hardware 17,000 KiCad Components Freely Available for PCB Designers

2026-05-18 From Manuel Christa | Translated by AI 3 min Reading Time

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The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) grants free access to more than 17,000 proven circuit components for KiCad. The professionally maintained collection is intended to save developers a lot of research work and speed up the design process.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has published its internally used component library for the circuit board software KiCad under an open source license. The institute is thus making a pool of more than 17,000 electronic components available in a public GitLab repository. The collection has been maintained for years by the in-house Design Office in Geneva and is continuously expanded for daily use. It includes both the circuit symbols for the circuit diagram and the corresponding footprints for the final PCB layout.

With the release under the permissive license CERN-OHL-P, the research center is targeting developers worldwide who design their own professional circuits. The publication fits seamlessly into the institute's tradition of making key technologies openly accessible. As early as 1993, CERN made the source code of the World Wide Web available to the general public. In addition, the center itself played a key role in the development of the PCB software KiCad and created a recognized standard for open hardware projects with the CERN Open Hardware Licence.

Focus on Connectors And Industry Standards

KiCad has now established itself as a permanent fixture in development practice. A professionally curated component collection, such as the one now available from Geneva, relieves developers of a large part of the time-consuming research work. In addition, the use of tried and tested component data minimizes the potential for errors that inevitably arise when manually creating new circuit symbols and footprints.

Connectors make up by far the largest share within the new library. This reflects the extremely high demand for connector and mezzanine boards in complex research electronics. The collection also covers a wide range of standard components. Developers will find prepared files for logic ICs, analog components and interface components. Operational amplifiers, controllers, DC-DC converters, diodes and transistors are also part of the extensive package. The range is completed by crystals, sensors, LEDs, relays, optocouplers and a complete range of passive components.

Special Radiation Chips And Precision Technology

A special feature of the published database is the integration of CERN-specific components. The library contains ready-made symbols for in-house, radiation-tolerant circuits. These so-called ASICs include, for example, the DC-DC converters FEAST and bPOL as well as the gigabit optical receiver GBTIA. Also included is the PICOTDC, a time-to-digital converter, which is characterized by an extremely high resolution in the picosecond range.

The related Open Hardware Repository documents the sophisticated hardware that can be created on the basis of these components. One of the best-known examples of this is the Ethernet extension called White Rabbit. This technology enables Ethernet timing with an accuracy of less than a nanosecond. The application of this precision technology is no longer limited to purely physical experiments at the Geneva particle accelerator. Today, it is also used in critical industrial applications, for example in European power grids for the timing of switching operations or in the financial world for the exact synchronization of global trading centers.

The current version of the component library is generated with KiCad version 9.x. However, according to those responsible, the collection is already compatible with the upcoming version 10 of the PCB software.

Sources and links: CERN KiCad library on GitLab: https://gitlab.cern.ch/ohwr/cern-kicad-libraries

Open Hardware Repository (OHWR): https://ohwr.org/

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Open Source Hardware 17,000 KiCad Components Freely Available for PCB Designers

Focus on Connectors And Industry Standards

Special Radiation Chips And Precision Technology

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