What the Last Buy status means for your BOM
Murata has marked the LQH3NPN101MGRL as Last Buy — the final production run is closed and no further manufacturing is planned. This is not an obsolete part you cannot source; it is a part you must source now or plan a replacement for before the remaining channel inventory dries up. For a board that already carries this 100 µH shielded wirewound inductor in the 1212 (3030 Metric) footprint, the immediate procurement decision is whether to buy lifetime buy quantities against the forecast or to qualify a drop-in alternative from the same LQH3 family while stock is still available.
100 µH, 220 mA — the real load limit
The headline 220 mA current rating is the thermal limit based on the 3.84 Ohm max DCR — at full rated current, I²R loss is roughly 186 mW, which in the 1212 package drives a measurable temperature rise above ambient. The saturation current is 190 mA, meaning the inductance drops 30% (typical for ferrite-core parts) once the DC bias crosses that threshold. For a power rail filtering application, the practical DC load should stay under 150 mA to keep both the inductance and the temperature in check. The self-resonant frequency is 5 MHz — this part is suited for DC-DC converter output filtering and power-line smoothing below 1–2 MHz switching frequencies. Above that, the parasitic capacitance across the winding starts to dominate and the inductor behaves more like a capacitor.
Package and board-fit
The ferrite core and shielded construction keep flux leakage low, which matters when the inductor sits next to a sensitive analog or RF section. Operating temperature is -40°C to 85°C, which covers industrial ambient and most telecom outdoor enclosures but not under-hood automotive or engine-bay applications.