In a post regarding heat dissipation in a linear regulator, one answer provided this nice little pin-equivalent smps. It was a great reply, and I'll likely order a few myself.
I am wondering though, why is there so much empty space? It doesn't appear to need extra layers - except maybe a ground - and it looks like it could be far more compact.
Is there something going on that is not obvious from its appearance?
edit: to be clear, I was not the OP for the linked post. Just borrowing it for this follow-up question.
Answer
All that copper on the back side (the leftmost of your three pictures) is acting as a heat sink for the switching IC.
If you read the datasheets for this kind of IC, they'll often specify a certain area of copper to be connected to the ground (or possibly the input voltage) pin to give adequate heat dissipation.
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