Are you guys and girls interested in seeing further capacitor analysis? Perhaps investigating the impact of cooling on the ripple current handling of the KEMET polymer cap; or maybe looking further into the quirky capacitance and ESR variations of the CeraLink; or even making a circuit to test out the PolyCharge capacitors in the real world? Let me know what you want to see next!
I've been in power electronics for most of my career (I'm now retired at 67) and this was one of the best explanations about capacitors I have ever seen. Nice job.
I did electronics in the late 80s before being told I had to go into computers when all telecoms etc went digital. it stuff goes out of date every 18 months min 😢
The real advantage of the wet tantalum is that one plate is made of pure tantalum and the dialectic is produced by creating a tantalum oxide film over that. The second "plate" is sulphuric acid, so in the event the oxide layer (dielectric ) gets damaged (say by accidentally exceeding its breakdown voltage) the acid reoxides it effectively making it self healing. While the value might drift as a result, at least having a working cap could mean the difference between life and death in the aerospace industry.
Tantalums are used extensively for space applications. However, they are quite finicky and prone to shorting when failing, but luckily they tend to fail during the first few power cycles and are otherwise quite reliable if you take care to not stress them with fast discharging or high voltage.
Man, had the modern internet existed when I went to college for my engineering degree it would have been such a different experience. Content like this would have made things so much easier.
@stellamcwick8455 So what preceded this "Modern Internet".? I'm small town rural Australia, been connected since 1978. Access to University's and Library's on every continent. "Content like this" drove the Internet into existence. All be it still images and pages of text, bbs and forums. 👉"A great deal of what we find, depends greatly on, what we are looking for."
@@snakezdewiggle6084 , to be clear Im referring to the ability to pull up videos and tutorials like this on my phone, not have to read it from some poorly written blogpost or BBS file. Even in the 90’s when I went to school we only had dial-up. Great for BBS’s and low resolution blog posts but useless for any type of streaming and video media content. Even when I was in school we didn’t have a LAN so to speak save for a coax token ring for printing. My only sources of information were the books we had for class, the library, or the instructors when you could schedule time with them, or one or two really shitty web 1.0 websites. If i had been able to access the thousands of hours of commentary and videos that dealt with very specific topics and subjects I was struggling with, that discussed those topics from a multitude of viewpoints and levels of complexities from a multitude of cultural perspectives, I wouldn’t have struggled to understand those concepts nearly as much. College would have been far more fruitful.
@@orppranator5230 , depending on the degree a mortgage isn’t a bad comparison. Although my degree has been a better investment than a house ever could have been. A house would have limited my choices in my life where my degree gave me choices I never would have had otherwise.
Very good presentation. For ceramic capacitors there are two classes of dielectric, (1 & 2 of course), which present different characteristics, price, volume/capacitance, voltage offset, piezoelectricity, and such. Class 1 dielectrics are NP0 and C0G most commonly, and class 2 dielectrics include X7R, Y5V, etc. Also, the wet-slug Tantalum capacitor is seldom the best choice for commercial applications, but in high-reliability, harsh environment, service they are usually indestructible (with no known failure mode when operated within ratings). They would be the kind of bulk capacitance you would find in space probes (Voyager, New Horizons, etc.) or military applications. I have some I use for bench testing that were made in 1976, and they still work fine.
@@jacobfaseler5311 We still use them quite a bit in space applications, usually for hold-up capacitance. As switch-mode power supply frequencies increase they are less useful as time goes by.
My favorite feature of electrolytic capacitors is the cross-shaped notches in the metal plate at the top. Designed to tear open apart and direct the explosion and boiling electrolyte away from the PCB, instead of spraying it all around, and also create a neat hole for the pressure to escape instead of sending shrapnel of the casing in all directions. Literally, them exploding is such an inherent trait they have a feature engineered in, to minimize adverse impact of the explosion.
Such a good video! Straight to the points, no unnecessary fluff bullshit, explaining things that need to be explained, even sponsorship is absolutely spot on. I'd totally love if more of UA-cam was like this. The only little I'd want to add is how electrolytic capacitors create their barrier between layers (IIRC something about electrolyte creating very thin oxide layer which serves as dielectric), but otherwise, wow. Thank you.
I sort of knew what each type of capacitor is good at but wanted to know what this video had to show. I must say I learnt a lot more... Thanks for the wonderful video. "film capacitor do what film capacitors do best - turning into inductors, and polycharge taking alternate route to uselessness" That was super hilarious :)
When comparing apples to apples, remember that each type has it's ideal use (which is why they are different), and so it will be hard to get an equal test output when trying to display results. Maybe show a graph where each type is used in it's natural environment. The comparison output, or result, would be, "As it is used typically." Kind of like competition racing. Drag cars, and 'bumper cars' (demolition derby) could be shown in a comparo, but they would have to be displayed and graphed in comparison to cars of their own type 'in circuit' (haha), and then correlated across in comparison. Cool video. Good vocal articulation, excellent presentation, and I like the charts and stats, which can often say in 20 seconds what it takes 20 minutes to explain with words. ;):👍
I could have sent you a handful of the tantalums and saved you some money. I have thousands of old surplus caps. BTW, tantalum capacitors are also electrolytic capacitors, so you can think of electrolytic capacitors by their chemistry, as being either tantalum electrolytic or aluminum electrolytic. I note that these days a lot of people are calling aluminum electrolytic caps just 'electrolytic' capacitors, as if aluminum was the only sort of electrolytic capacitor in use. The electrolytically created dielectric is the reason both aluminum and tantalum dielectric caps are polarized. If they are installed backward the dielectric layer will be depleted until they short circuit between the plates. Capacitors have so many other different parameters that may or may not be of importance in any specific application. From frequency handling ability, to absolute temperature handling, to capacity per size, that picking the best cap for the application becomes quite an engineering project, just as picking the best inductor for the job does as well. A video on picking the right inductor could go on for hours. Just the words to describe inductor parameters can run pages. Another important but seldom considered characteristic of capacitors is the degree of sensitivity to microphonics. That has created problems in more than one product over the years. Some power caps are very subject to microphonics. After all, a 'condenser' microphone Is really just a capacitor. 100 years ago capacitors were all called 'condensers'. But as science learned more about the processes of electrons and fields they decided that 'condenser' wasn't a very good description of the device and changed the name to capacitor. The automotive industry was one of the last to call capacitors condensers, at least in old style spark distributors. In microphone audio, as noted, capacitor microphones are still being called 'condenser' mics. BTW, capacitors used in power RF applications were not included in your video. AC and RF power capacitors are very different from DC power capacitors, and variable RF power capacitors are even more different.
This video, and the channel it seems, are amazing. The presentation is perfectly clear and insightful, and the style and humor are on-point to not make it sound like a boring lecture. I have gone through a few videos so far, and this is a great find for people going into DIY. Keep up the good work!
I like the ad in your video. Checking out the stuff you are given with due diligence? That's flipping awesome! Also, funny that your channel was only recommended to me while visiting the UK.
I own that LCR meter and the first thing I did upon getting was build real kelvin clips. Got some isolated clamps and used shielded 22g 2 wire. Works lovely for home lab and field repair work.
I ordered my DER EE DE-5000 from Tokyo on September 1st 2024 for £100.44 with free postage and it arrived at my house on September 4th 2024. It came without any leads, battery or English instruction manual. I did a Google Search for the device and as Elektor didn't get a mention I settled on Ebay. I get the Elektor Magazine and their Newsletter. Absolutely no issues with VAT.
Very informative! A lot of really good information here. It's amazing how capacitors have evolved over the course of my career in electronics. So many better choices today than back when I started in the field. We really haven't seen this kind of change with other passive components.
Excellent. Loved your MOSFET video too. I hope to see this kind of video about every major Electronic component. Diodes will be a good candidate for the next video. There are so many variations of them.
Really great video! I enjoy the thorough explanation as I had to figure most of this out myself during my education. I also like that you test some equipment, because I am always on the look out for good meters that aren't the costing an arm and a leg.
Thanks for the hard work. Great video and useful information. The only time I have had to replace wet tantalum capacitors is when I was repairing Fluke calibration equipment.
"‘So this was a quiet pricy video to be honest.’ Honestly, I can tell how much effort went into this video, and it really shows. Your content on power electronics, especially capacitors, is always top-notch. Guys, if you’re learning or even just interested in this stuff, hit that like button and support this awesome creator!
👍 I can only complain about hard to read graph colors, probably due to platform compression. Also, perhaps a deeper dive to the explain the confusion between cap impedance and ESR.
@@electrarc240 How would you add DC bias without affecting the LCR meter? 🤔 If I find a capacitor in my collection, can I use typical inexpensive LCR or capacitance equipment to determine it's capability to perform filtering or energy storage in a DC power circuit, or do I have to put it in a particular circuit and get out the equations and calculator?
I’m not sure to be honest, I know there is a way though I’ll look into it at some point. An LCR meter should be all you need. Good ones definitely aren’t inexpensive though 😬
Appreciate you devoting so much effort to making these videos, really interesting stuff. I work with electronics and quite complicated appliances with some unusual power systems as part of my job. That said, compared to many of my colleagues who are very experienced qualified electronics engineers, I often feel like the idiot holding the soldering iron by the hot end then wondering what the burning smell is. 😅 I'm finding your videos particularly useful as revision guides, explainers and deep dives; after the algorithm recommended your PSU component explainer to me I quickly watched all of them! Once again, really interesting subject material, about topics relevant to my work and hobbies, so they're also very useful reference guides. Enjoy the delivery and editing too 🙂👍 Looking forward to future videos. 🍻
The only other context where I've heard of 'wet tantalum' capacitors is Marco Reps' noise amplifier video; there they are prized for low leakage current.
The coolest capacitors i got to play around with were mica paper capapacitors used for military applications. They are quite small, high voltage and have an extremely low ESR. They work quite well for RF applications even though they are designed for pulse power applications ❤
There’s something very satisfying about working with components that are both resilient and specialized, especially when they perform so reliably outside their original purpose. Definitely sounds like a dream capacitor for any high-performance project! ❤"
I'm interested in learning more about the effects of ESR and how it's accounted for in designs. I know, for example, that ESR is calculated in analog circuits that include a lot of DC restoration or waveform demodulation.
@@electrarc240 You are making me very jealous - I wish I could go back to study electronics:) I teach physics and chemistry at the moment ( A Level ) and have a keen interest in electronics. You are a great teacher - very well paced, clear and concise in all your videos. I would suggest some kind of series where we can construct some breadboard projects with you - maybe even think about a patreon? I would 100% pay for some tuition on circuit design and understanding of schematics.
@@james5553 I think for the next year I won't have enough time for a Patreon due to work, but could possibly do a series like you suggest. I would certainly like to get more younger viewers as currently only around 5-10% are my age. But I would definitely like to do teaching in many forms after university. Thanks for the kind words!
That "aircore" cap could have also been a variable cap used in an old radio tuner. Good video....strange story but once I used some defibrillator caps to build a flashlamp pumped laser.
Yeah it was I have quite a few air core caps I use for demonstrations like this, they are definitely the best for showing the simple parallel plate concept
On the film capacitors, it seems possible that since the dielectric is both mechanical and flexible it may vibrate at lower frequencies and show effects caused by the resonance of these vibrations. Maybe?
Great work. Please note that the rated temperature of an electro is not really something you should regard as a max operating temperature - it is the core temperature at which the rated lifetime applies. Rated lifetime is typically between 1000 and 5000 hours ie only months! However rated lifetime doubles for every 10 degree drop in core operating temperature below the rated temperature. Core operating temperature depends on heating (Irms^2 x esr) and dissipation (much harder to determine!)
"Electrolytic capacitor rated temps indicate the core temp for rated lifespan (1,000-5,000 hours), not max operating temp. Every 10°C drop below this doubles lifespan, but actual core temp depends on heating (Irms² x ESR) and harder-to-calculate dissipation. Important for long-term reliability!"
Embedded systems engineer here, couple notes about capacitor ESR, been building my own SMPS (STM32-microcontroller) control board and it's currently running a low voltage buck topology practice board with a self-wound toroidal inductor and have gotten great experience from making the thing from scratch and learning along the way with all the programming for the ADC and PWM peripherals and probing the power board with an oscilloscope. Too little ESR can actually be bad in SMPS application, you actually want some, because it dampens the oscillations between the inductor and capacitors on the output. Had a slight ringing without any external extra resistor, but after adding a small series resistor to the big electrolytic on the output side, the big ringing calmed down, but then because of the added resistance I noticed an increase on the small signal AC voltage ripple, which makes sense as the capacitor can't dampen them as effectively with the increased ESR. So you can tune the output filtering either towards the large DC signal transient filtering with added ESR, or the faster small AC signal ripple with lower ESR. I hadn't ever internalized this before and will likely be adding a place for a series resistor for the bulk capacitors in the future.
I may be wrong here but it sort of sounds like you're just turning a noise issue into a heat/loss issue, instead of solving the underlying problem. I have seen quite a bunch of converter circuits and I don't recall ever coming across a design that had a deliberately added series resistor for the bulk capacitors. I don't know the details of your design, but if you have ringing at the output that suggests that your filtering may be insufficient or you may have flaws in your design, such as too high parasitic inductances in critical current loops. Instead of adding a resistor you may want to try tweaking the layout or adding smaller capacitors parallel to the bulk capacitors. Or whatever other thing you can do to reduce the ringing without just turning the noise into heat in a resistor.
@user-td3yi1mq7p hahaha I completely missed the part at the top where he's working with a buck converter, I was under the impression he was working on a flyback topology. I agree with you, he's using RC filtering on his output to compensate for some sort of noise issue elsewhere in the design. Like you suggest it's likely he's missing the notion that bulk smoothing capacitance isn't effective for high frequency bypassing, the addition of a low esr bypass cap is probably the missing piece. It's also possible that his pwm methodology is introducing a lot of harmonics, since it sounds like he programmed his own controller, it's also unclear if he's got any current compensation.
No, it’s quite hard data to find and the Keysight LCR meter I used didn’t have a HV bias option installed so I couldn’t test myself. I admit that may have skewed the data somewhat it’s a good point I hadn’t really considered. Thanks
@@electrarc240 Sometimes it's in the data sheet. From what I have seen, many ceramic caps drop down to only 20% of their listed capacitance at max voltage. I also noticed this when I did some measurements on a board with only ceramic caps and was wondering why the resonance frequency was lower than expected.
For nice cutaway views of capacitors and many other electronic components you will enjoy "Open Circuits" - a fantastic coffee table book by Eric Schlaepfer and Windsor H. Oskay.
Nice stuff... I was dealing with audio electronics a while back as work and now back to hobby. I always place very high quality capacitors on the board, and especially very high grade small capacitors right next to the load. Like DAC chips and opamp chips. Polymer electrolytic (used to be Sanyo OS-CON)/ceramic for digital circuits, good old Elna Silmic II and Nichicon KZ/UKZ for the analog section. While these are significantly more expensive than the cheapest commodity grade stuff from the same manufacturers, they are still quite cheap for the difference they make and the overall cost of the end product. Just recapped a Nikko Alpha 230 power amp recently, was surprised to find out have 1uf/100V bypass caps on the power output transistors stage. Upgraded them to 10uF/100V with the caps I have in my drawer. Managed to upgrade most except for the bipolar electrolytic and the two big filter caps. Lots of fun....
Reliability testing is quite interesting too, how companies over stress components and extrapolate the results to guesstimate the lifetime on the datasheet, sometimes 100k hours+. Definitely not the most accurate numbers on datasheets lol
min 27:36 you can see that TDK and KEMET have the same weird QUALITY FACTOR response, only in a different scale. They have the same peaks at the same time.
So glad i found you! Im restoring 50's Telefunken tube-amp stereo and i want to use an interesting cap to filter the input power. Can i go foil? Do foils come with a ground?
What i want to know is how switching capacitors of the same rated spec would sound differently in an audio amplifier. Is it because of the discharge speed?
Congratulations! This is a Master's Dissertation right there presented in 42 minutes. You ought to publish this in book form and make it easy for all of us. Thanks for making this, and yes, I'm interested in more info on the topic.
A few people have mentioned the possibility of mechanical resonance in the film caps as the culprit behind the odd low-frequency behavior. I also think that is the most likely explanation. Several people have mentioned the horrendous negative voltage coefficient of capacitance of some ceramic types. That wasn't a "thing" with the ceramics used in older leaded ceramic caps and has come about with the push to miniaturization. I regard most of the caps with this problem as worthless for most applications - you are better off with a physically larger cap that doesn't have the problem. Some manufacturers are rather coy about openly disclosing the problem but it is sometimes revealed in graphs. Note that this is not a problem that only shows up at high voltage. It can be an issue with caps rated for just a few volts, as you might use for decoupling in digital circuitry. In the old days, wet tantalum electrolytic caps were expensive because the cases were made of pure silver. That actually was a problem because metallic whiskers would grow and short the caps internally. That caused one space capsule disaster (I can't recall if there was loss of life). After that the manufacturers moved to tantalum cases. In precision analog circuits there are even more considerations, notably things like dielectric absorption (which is what is going on in high voltage caps that _appear_ to self-charge).
I repaired an old boss me-10 ss effects pedal for guitar. They bought a bad batch of sanyos that year and every cap in every unit that year died just out of warranty. The 100uf decoupling smd electrolytic caps all reek so bad that I could only remove a few at a time or the wife went nuts because of the stink haha
I, umm, kinda hate to be the one to point this out now, after the fact, but you know that instead of a fancy PCB and everything, you could have just, well, _soldered a wire_ across each of the pairs of pins on those 4-pin capacitors, right? Seriously great video, though. Some of those graphs are absolutely spectacular at demonstrating really well the differences between all these different types, and why you might want to pick one over another for a particular application. I don't think I've ever seen anything else that did such a good job of explaining it.
The inductance would make a difference for those DC link capacitors even though it is only a few nH. By overlapping the DC plains of the PCB this can be reduced a lot. Thanks a lot!!
I am a total neophyte about this, but I appreciate the glimpse into how much more complex things are that I thought - but I should have known they are. For audio filters, it would be great to see how bypass caps change things, and whether the main cap and the bypass cap "should" be the same type? I had thought (before watching this video) that smaller caps have lower ESR than larger ones; and that this was why bypass caps are used - but obviously the bypass cap is not lowering the ESR?
If the two are connected in parallel then the smaller cap will have better performance at higher frequencies. While big caps have low ESR they also tend to have more inductance and therefore are less effective at higher frequencies. A mix of several sizes and types is ideal
@@electrarc240 Thanks - it is the more extended treble that comes with using a bypass, that is great. And I would expect the the net ESR is reduced from the parallel caps? I also wonder if audio signal has enough current to significantly heat the caps - and I would suspect that parallel cabs would reduce the heating and/or increase heat dissipation, and improve performance, over a longer time?
Hello. I have an ongoing backyard project which requires for the electronics I build to operate in high humidity environments. I have had success with tantalum capacitors so far, but they can get expensive and I want higher capacitance. Normal electrolytic caps don't maintain their values due to humidity. Luckily, I only need to operate at 12 V, or I wouldn't be able to use tantalum caps either. I've not tried polymer capacitors because I'm a perma-noob and haven't heard of them. Do you know if they're any good for humid environments? Are any of the others? Thank you in advance!
Have you considered using a hermetic case for your PCB? That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about selecting components that can handle extreme conditions.
You really need a way to measure these capacitors with a DC bias. Many ceramic capacitors capacitance drops off drastically when a DC voltage is applied. Sometimes you only get 20% of the rated capacitance near their rated voltage. Also, some capacitors will act as a microphone. Not a nice behavior in a loud environment.
They are very easy to purchase and replace. I have never paid for such service. I purchase them on a schedule so I’m almost never caught out waiting for a part.
An electrolytic capacitor next to any resistor is basically a time bomb for smoke as anyone who works in electronics knows it's so insane to me how many consumer products have this flaw still
Are you guys and girls interested in seeing further capacitor analysis? Perhaps investigating the impact of cooling on the ripple current handling of the KEMET polymer cap; or maybe looking further into the quirky capacitance and ESR variations of the CeraLink; or even making a circuit to test out the PolyCharge capacitors in the real world? Let me know what you want to see next!
Short answer? Yes!
A. hell yes B. smhmh enbies are uninterested in capacitors... all they know these days is blue hair be pretty and hot chip. and no capacitors.
Definately yeess
I would like a comparison of the different types of caps in a real circuit that can make you see the differences in the real world.
Too right
I've been in power electronics for most of my career (I'm now retired at 67) and this was one of the best explanations about capacitors I have ever seen. Nice job.
I did electronics in the late 80s before being told I had to go into computers when all telecoms etc went digital. it stuff goes out of date every 18 months min 😢
I think I've seen your comment on multiple videos 🤔
Why are you watching a video on capacitors if you already know
@@ThatGuyThatCommentedOn_A_Video - I don't know everything. New technologies are coming out every day.
the only reason I use these videos is so I can point out the errors...
The real advantage of the wet tantalum is that one plate is made of pure tantalum and the dialectic is produced by creating a tantalum oxide film over that. The second "plate" is sulphuric acid, so in the event the oxide layer (dielectric ) gets damaged (say by accidentally exceeding its breakdown voltage) the acid reoxides it effectively making it self healing. While the value might drift as a result, at least having a working cap could mean the difference between life and death in the aerospace industry.
Interesting, thanks!
Tantalums are used extensively for space applications. However, they are quite finicky and prone to shorting when failing, but luckily they tend to fail during the first few power cycles and are otherwise quite reliable if you take care to not stress them with fast discharging or high voltage.
hmm, kind of like electolytics where you use them if "anything goes", only the competing factor here is reliability instead of price
Man, had the modern internet existed when I went to college for my engineering degree it would have been such a different experience. Content like this would have made things so much easier.
Fully fully agree. Just one vid so much intell.
@stellamcwick8455
So what preceded this "Modern Internet".?
I'm small town rural Australia, been connected since 1978. Access to University's and Library's on every continent.
"Content like this" drove the Internet into existence. All be it still images and pages of text, bbs and forums.
👉"A great deal of what we find, depends greatly on, what we are looking for."
@@snakezdewiggle6084 , to be clear Im referring to the ability to pull up videos and tutorials like this on my phone, not have to read it from some poorly written blogpost or BBS file.
Even in the 90’s when I went to school we only had dial-up. Great for BBS’s and low resolution blog posts but useless for any type of streaming and video media content.
Even when I was in school we didn’t have a LAN so to speak save for a coax token ring for printing. My only sources of information were the books we had for class, the library, or the instructors when you could schedule time with them, or one or two really shitty web 1.0 websites.
If i had been able to access the thousands of hours of commentary and videos that dealt with very specific topics and subjects I was struggling with, that discussed those topics from a multitude of viewpoints and levels of complexities from a multitude of cultural perspectives, I wouldn’t have struggled to understand those concepts nearly as much. College would have been far more fruitful.
Well nowadays you have to take out a mortgage (more or less) in order to pay for it, so I don’t pity you older people.
@@orppranator5230 , depending on the degree a mortgage isn’t a bad comparison. Although my degree has been a better investment than a house ever could have been. A house would have limited my choices in my life where my degree gave me choices I never would have had otherwise.
I’m only 8 minutes in and omg you’re excellent at explaining things clearly, precisely and without any waffle. 👏
Great....now I'm hungry for waffles....
@ You’re welcome! 😉
This is a gem of a channel
Very good presentation. For ceramic capacitors there are two classes of dielectric, (1 & 2 of course), which present different characteristics, price, volume/capacitance, voltage offset, piezoelectricity, and such. Class 1 dielectrics are NP0 and C0G most commonly, and class 2 dielectrics include X7R, Y5V, etc.
Also, the wet-slug Tantalum capacitor is seldom the best choice for commercial applications, but in high-reliability, harsh environment, service they are usually indestructible (with no known failure mode when operated within ratings). They would be the kind of bulk capacitance you would find in space probes (Voyager, New Horizons, etc.) or military applications. I have some I use for bench testing that were made in 1976, and they still work fine.
Less so in mil applications now-a-days. Contemporary mil designs generally ban all wet dielectrics outright, at least for avionics.
@@jacobfaseler5311 We still use them quite a bit in space applications, usually for hold-up capacitance. As switch-mode power supply frequencies increase they are less useful as time goes by.
Relying in past investment makes Ceramic not obsolete. Stress areas? Polymer?
Switchboard table with duel polymer and Ceramic rerouted
Ripples
Thanks
Thanks
Man, this is pure gold! This is one I will be viewing more than once. Much appreciated! 👍🏻
My favorite feature of electrolytic capacitors is the cross-shaped notches in the metal plate at the top. Designed to tear open apart and direct the explosion and boiling electrolyte away from the PCB, instead of spraying it all around, and also create a neat hole for the pressure to escape instead of sending shrapnel of the casing in all directions. Literally, them exploding is such an inherent trait they have a feature engineered in, to minimize adverse impact of the explosion.
It is a funny feature when you think of it that way. Small ones sometimes don’t have them so they are more exciting if *accidentally* reverse charged
My compliments. One of the best videos to the subject I ever saw. My old professor at Univ should have gone to school with you....
Great video. I only know basic electronics and was wondering why there are so many different types of capacitors. You're explaining it all very well.
Such a good video! Straight to the points, no unnecessary fluff bullshit, explaining things that need to be explained, even sponsorship is absolutely spot on. I'd totally love if more of UA-cam was like this.
The only little I'd want to add is how electrolytic capacitors create their barrier between layers (IIRC something about electrolyte creating very thin oxide layer which serves as dielectric), but otherwise, wow. Thank you.
That was the best capacitor description I’ve ever seen thanks for creating this video
I sort of knew what each type of capacitor is good at but wanted to know what this video had to show. I must say I learnt a lot more... Thanks for the wonderful video. "film capacitor do what film capacitors do best - turning into inductors, and polycharge taking alternate route to uselessness" That was super hilarious :)
Ah thank you! I did have quite a bit of fun commenting on the graphs especially as it got to the later ones and the patterns were becoming clear
I love me a 40 minute video full of useful info about a single category of electronic components
I use air-core capacitors in electronics quite often. They're invaluable in HF applications.
Yeah I meant power electronics my apologies. Certainly are used in other areas!
@@electrarc240 no worries. Appreciate the video. Thorough.
When comparing apples to apples, remember that each type has it's ideal use (which is why they are different), and so it will be hard to get an equal test output when trying to display results. Maybe show a graph where each type is used in it's natural environment. The comparison output, or result, would be, "As it is used typically." Kind of like competition racing. Drag cars, and 'bumper cars' (demolition derby) could be shown in a comparo, but they would have to be displayed and graphed in comparison to cars of their own type 'in circuit' (haha), and then correlated across in comparison.
Cool video. Good vocal articulation, excellent presentation, and I like the charts and stats, which can often say in 20 seconds what it takes 20 minutes to explain with words. ;):👍
I could have sent you a handful of the tantalums and saved you some money. I have thousands of old surplus caps. BTW, tantalum capacitors are also electrolytic capacitors, so you can think of electrolytic capacitors by their chemistry, as being either tantalum electrolytic or aluminum electrolytic. I note that these days a lot of people are calling aluminum electrolytic caps just 'electrolytic' capacitors, as if aluminum was the only sort of electrolytic capacitor in use. The electrolytically created dielectric is the reason both aluminum and tantalum dielectric caps are polarized. If they are installed backward the dielectric layer will be depleted until they short circuit between the plates.
Capacitors have so many other different parameters that may or may not be of importance in any specific application. From frequency handling ability, to absolute temperature handling, to capacity per size, that picking the best cap for the application becomes quite an engineering project, just as picking the best inductor for the job does as well. A video on picking the right inductor could go on for hours. Just the words to describe inductor parameters can run pages.
Another important but seldom considered characteristic of capacitors is the degree of sensitivity to microphonics. That has created problems in more than one product over the years. Some power caps are very subject to microphonics. After all, a 'condenser' microphone Is really just a capacitor. 100 years ago capacitors were all called 'condensers'. But as science learned more about the processes of electrons and fields they decided that 'condenser' wasn't a very good description of the device and changed the name to capacitor. The automotive industry was one of the last to call capacitors condensers, at least in old style spark distributors. In microphone audio, as noted, capacitor microphones are still being called 'condenser' mics.
BTW, capacitors used in power RF applications were not included in your video. AC and RF power capacitors are very different from DC power capacitors, and variable RF power capacitors are even more different.
I thought electret was the adopted term.
What does it mean to be susceptible to microphonics? Does that mean that air pressure waves can charge/discharge the caps?
I will pay your postage if you send me some! :)
This video, and the channel it seems, are amazing. The presentation is perfectly clear and insightful, and the style and humor are on-point to not make it sound like a boring lecture. I have gone through a few videos so far, and this is a great find for people going into DIY. Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much
Thanks!
0:18 "We won't go into too much detail" *Looks at runtime of 42 minutes
But very good explanation though ;)
I like the ad in your video. Checking out the stuff you are given with due diligence? That's flipping awesome!
Also, funny that your channel was only recommended to me while visiting the UK.
Wow, it’s the best explanation of capacitors I’ve ever heard by far, I learned a lot in this video, you got a new fan on your channel!
I own that LCR meter and the first thing I did upon getting was build real kelvin clips. Got some isolated clamps and used shielded 22g 2 wire. Works lovely for home lab and field repair work.
Just ordered one, couldn't believe I could get an affordable decent one. All the other cheap ones I've tried were worthless
I ordered my DER EE DE-5000 from Tokyo on September 1st 2024 for £100.44 with free postage and it arrived at my house on September 4th 2024.
It came without any leads, battery or English instruction manual.
I did a Google Search for the device and as Elektor didn't get a mention I settled on Ebay.
I get the Elektor Magazine and their Newsletter.
Absolutely no issues with VAT.
Very informative! A lot of really good information here. It's amazing how capacitors have evolved over the course of my career in electronics. So many better choices today than back when I started in the field. We really haven't seen this kind of change with other passive components.
Yeah even I've been able to see some considerable improvements over my short time on this planet!
Every one of your videos are so easy to learn from. Very well done!
Excellent. Loved your MOSFET video too. I hope to see this kind of video about every major Electronic component. Diodes will be a good candidate for the next video. There are so many variations of them.
Really great video! I enjoy the thorough explanation as I had to figure most of this out myself during my education. I also like that you test some equipment, because I am always on the look out for good meters that aren't the costing an arm and a leg.
wow! very well explained and informative
Thanks for the hard work. Great video and useful information.
The only time I have had to replace wet tantalum capacitors is when I was repairing Fluke calibration equipment.
Excellent Insight. You. put alot into this. Thanks.
Yes it would be most interesting to your new proposal. .
brilliantly explained
You have got a bright future young man
Great work, thank You very much! ❤
Thanks very much mate 🙂
You make great content.
"‘So this was a quiet pricy video to be honest.’ Honestly, I can tell how much effort went into this video, and it really shows. Your content on power electronics, especially capacitors, is always top-notch. Guys, if you’re learning or even just interested in this stuff, hit that like button and support this awesome creator!
The graphics are very illustrative. Great job.
Greattings from Argentina.
SUB-BLOODY-SCRIBED!!! And how the hell have i only stumbled across you now?!!
love your videos man!!!
You are doing a nice job keep it up always bro,
loving the videos recently
Loving the viewers recently
You got my Sub! Keep up the good work! 😃💥👍🌋⚡🔋
Hi fellow RBR fan!
I forgot to hide the merch haha
@@pallas_wept 👀
👍 I can only complain about hard to read graph colors, probably due to platform compression.
Also, perhaps a deeper dive to the explain the confusion between cap impedance and ESR.
Yeah a shorter video on just that topic is a good idea
@@electrarc240 Awesome work and appreciation for all the heavy lifting you've done already...your videos are by far the best on YT.
Great video bravo !
Would be interested in seeing a chart of how DC bias affects the different parameters for the different types. Awesome compilation!
Definitely will do a video on this one day, I want to see that too!
@@electrarc240 How would you add DC bias without affecting the LCR meter? 🤔 If I find a capacitor in my collection, can I use typical inexpensive LCR or capacitance equipment to determine it's capability to perform filtering or energy storage in a DC power circuit, or do I have to put it in a particular circuit and get out the equations and calculator?
I’m not sure to be honest, I know there is a way though I’ll look into it at some point. An LCR meter should be all you need. Good ones definitely aren’t inexpensive though 😬
I only knew TDK for their cassette tapes from back in the day, until now ^^
My dad said the same when I mentioned them to him!
Great video, thank's
Appreciate you devoting so much effort to making these videos, really interesting stuff. I work with electronics and quite complicated appliances with some unusual power systems as part of my job. That said, compared to many of my colleagues who are very experienced qualified electronics engineers, I often feel like the idiot holding the soldering iron by the hot end then wondering what the burning smell is. 😅
I'm finding your videos particularly useful as revision guides, explainers and deep dives; after the algorithm recommended your PSU component explainer to me I quickly watched all of them!
Once again, really interesting subject material, about topics relevant to my work and hobbies, so they're also very useful reference guides. Enjoy the delivery and editing too 🙂👍 Looking forward to future videos. 🍻
Yes, the content I share always turns people off
So nice thanks sir
excellent explanation
Eagerly waiting for your videos
The only other context where I've heard of 'wet tantalum' capacitors is Marco Reps' noise amplifier video; there they are prized for low leakage current.
Very Informative!! Can you also make some tutorials using Orcad ? I mean making schematic to designing PCB layout .
I use KiCad I’m afraid
@@electrarc240 No problem. Keep uploading the videos. Great stuff 🙌🙌
@@electrarc240 Hooray for KiCad!
The coolest capacitors i got to play around with were mica paper capapacitors used for military applications. They are quite small, high voltage and have an extremely low ESR. They work quite well for RF applications even though they are designed for pulse power applications ❤
There’s something very satisfying about working with components that are both resilient and specialized, especially when they perform so reliably outside their original purpose. Definitely sounds like a dream capacitor for any high-performance project! ❤"
Nice video! Would be interesting to include a capacitor meant for hifi speaker filters, like Jantzen or Mundorf.
Very cool ..!! Thank You for sharing all that hard work .. Cheers :)
I'm interested in learning more about the effects of ESR and how it's accounted for in designs. I know, for example, that ESR is calculated in analog circuits that include a lot of DC restoration or waveform demodulation.
Awesome video.
Please please make video on inductor and transformer design for smps with practical
Here here I second that one
This should be doable, as my university has that as a second year project, so I already have a modular forward converter board I can use for demo!
@@electrarc240 You are making me very jealous - I wish I could go back to study electronics:) I teach physics and chemistry at the moment ( A Level ) and have a keen interest in electronics. You are a great teacher - very well paced, clear and concise in all your videos. I would suggest some kind of series where we can construct some breadboard projects with you - maybe even think about a patreon? I would 100% pay for some tuition on circuit design and understanding of schematics.
@@james5553 I think for the next year I won't have enough time for a Patreon due to work, but could possibly do a series like you suggest. I would certainly like to get more younger viewers as currently only around 5-10% are my age. But I would definitely like to do teaching in many forms after university. Thanks for the kind words!
Only 30k subs? Why? Impressive work!!
That "aircore" cap could have also been a variable cap used in an old radio tuner. Good video....strange story but once I used some defibrillator caps to build a flashlamp pumped laser.
Yeah it was I have quite a few air core caps I use for demonstrations like this, they are definitely the best for showing the simple parallel plate concept
On the film capacitors, it seems possible that since the dielectric is both mechanical and flexible it may vibrate at lower frequencies and show effects caused by the resonance of these vibrations. Maybe?
Great work. Please note that the rated temperature of an electro is not really something you should regard as a max operating temperature - it is the core temperature at which the rated lifetime applies. Rated lifetime is typically between 1000 and 5000 hours ie only months! However rated lifetime doubles for every 10 degree drop in core operating temperature below the rated temperature. Core operating temperature depends on heating (Irms^2 x esr) and dissipation (much harder to determine!)
"Electrolytic capacitor rated temps indicate the core temp for rated lifespan (1,000-5,000 hours), not max operating temp. Every 10°C drop below this doubles lifespan, but actual core temp depends on heating (Irms² x ESR) and harder-to-calculate dissipation. Important for long-term reliability!"
You should make a video about ceramics and their differences and their terrible capacitance over voltage change
I think I will at some point
Embedded systems engineer here, couple notes about capacitor ESR, been building my own SMPS (STM32-microcontroller) control board and it's currently running a low voltage buck topology practice board with a self-wound toroidal inductor and have gotten great experience from making the thing from scratch and learning along the way with all the programming for the ADC and PWM peripherals and probing the power board with an oscilloscope. Too little ESR can actually be bad in SMPS application, you actually want some, because it dampens the oscillations between the inductor and capacitors on the output. Had a slight ringing without any external extra resistor, but after adding a small series resistor to the big electrolytic on the output side, the big ringing calmed down, but then because of the added resistance I noticed an increase on the small signal AC voltage ripple, which makes sense as the capacitor can't dampen them as effectively with the increased ESR. So you can tune the output filtering either towards the large DC signal transient filtering with added ESR, or the faster small AC signal ripple with lower ESR. I hadn't ever internalized this before and will likely be adding a place for a series resistor for the bulk capacitors in the future.
In low power converters (
I may be wrong here but it sort of sounds like you're just turning a noise issue into a heat/loss issue, instead of solving the underlying problem. I have seen quite a bunch of converter circuits and I don't recall ever coming across a design that had a deliberately added series resistor for the bulk capacitors.
I don't know the details of your design, but if you have ringing at the output that suggests that your filtering may be insufficient or you may have flaws in your design, such as too high parasitic inductances in critical current loops. Instead of adding a resistor you may want to try tweaking the layout or adding smaller capacitors parallel to the bulk capacitors. Or whatever other thing you can do to reduce the ringing without just turning the noise into heat in a resistor.
@user-td3yi1mq7p hahaha I completely missed the part at the top where he's working with a buck converter, I was under the impression he was working on a flyback topology. I agree with you, he's using RC filtering on his output to compensate for some sort of noise issue elsewhere in the design. Like you suggest it's likely he's missing the notion that bulk smoothing capacitance isn't effective for high frequency bypassing, the addition of a low esr bypass cap is probably the missing piece. It's also possible that his pwm methodology is introducing a lot of harmonics, since it sounds like he programmed his own controller, it's also unclear if he's got any current compensation.
I remember this confusing me the first time I was using one of Ti's regulators with D-CAP, you need to use relatively high ESR capacitors for those.
Nice video keep it up
Did you consider the DC bias dependency of the ceramic caps when calculating energy density?
No, it’s quite hard data to find and the Keysight LCR meter I used didn’t have a HV bias option installed so I couldn’t test myself. I admit that may have skewed the data somewhat it’s a good point I hadn’t really considered. Thanks
@@electrarc240 Sometimes it's in the data sheet. From what I have seen, many ceramic caps drop down to only 20% of their listed capacitance at max voltage. I also noticed this when I did some measurements on a board with only ceramic caps and was wondering why the resonance frequency was lower than expected.
Amuses me when you talk about the "old days 1980s" , that was 12 years after I started with vacuum tube point to point wiring.
For nice cutaway views of capacitors and many other electronic components you will enjoy "Open Circuits" - a fantastic coffee table book by Eric Schlaepfer and Windsor H. Oskay.
Already have it! Beautiful 😍
Great Video!
@ElectrArc240, thanks for the great video!
Nice stuff...
I was dealing with audio electronics a while back as work and now back to hobby.
I always place very high quality capacitors on the board, and especially very high grade small capacitors right next to the load. Like DAC chips and opamp chips.
Polymer electrolytic (used to be Sanyo OS-CON)/ceramic for digital circuits, good old Elna Silmic II and Nichicon KZ/UKZ for the analog section. While these are significantly more expensive than the cheapest commodity grade stuff from the same manufacturers, they are still quite cheap for the difference they make and the overall cost of the end product.
Just recapped a Nikko Alpha 230 power amp recently, was surprised to find out have 1uf/100V bypass caps on the power output transistors stage. Upgraded them to 10uF/100V with the caps I have in my drawer. Managed to upgrade most except for the bipolar electrolytic and the two big filter caps.
Lots of fun....
Great presentation! Thanks. You didn't, however, cover supercapacitors or ultracapacitors. Is it because they are not used in power electronics?
Thank your this analysis. I would really be interested in large capacity formats 1 farad or larger.
In-depth on reliability would be excellent…
Reliability testing is quite interesting too, how companies over stress components and extrapolate the results to guesstimate the lifetime on the datasheet, sometimes 100k hours+. Definitely not the most accurate numbers on datasheets lol
min 27:36 you can see that TDK and KEMET have the same weird QUALITY FACTOR response, only in a different scale. They have the same peaks at the same time.
And no. 5 in the thumbnail is actually two tantalums in parallel and spot welded.
So glad i found you! Im restoring 50's Telefunken tube-amp stereo and i want to use an interesting cap to filter the input power. Can i go foil? Do foils come with a ground?
What i want to know is how switching capacitors of the same rated spec would sound differently in an audio amplifier.
Is it because of the discharge speed?
Very cool my friend 👍🇮🇪🙏
Do you have a link for where you bought the caps please
All are from Mouser except the PolyCharge which I'm afraid you can't buy
Congratulations! This is a Master's Dissertation right there presented in 42 minutes. You ought to publish this in book form and make it easy for all of us. Thanks for making this, and yes, I'm interested in more info on the topic.
A few people have mentioned the possibility of mechanical resonance in the film caps as the culprit behind the odd low-frequency behavior. I also think that is the most likely explanation.
Several people have mentioned the horrendous negative voltage coefficient of capacitance of some ceramic types. That wasn't a "thing" with the ceramics used in older leaded ceramic caps and has come about with the push to miniaturization. I regard most of the caps with this problem as worthless for most applications - you are better off with a physically larger cap that doesn't have the problem. Some manufacturers are rather coy about openly disclosing the problem but it is sometimes revealed in graphs. Note that this is not a problem that only shows up at high voltage. It can be an issue with caps rated for just a few volts, as you might use for decoupling in digital circuitry.
In the old days, wet tantalum electrolytic caps were expensive because the cases were made of pure silver. That actually was a problem because metallic whiskers would grow and short the caps internally. That caused one space capsule disaster (I can't recall if there was loss of life). After that the manufacturers moved to tantalum cases.
In precision analog circuits there are even more considerations, notably things like dielectric absorption (which is what is going on in high voltage caps that _appear_ to self-charge).
I repaired an old boss me-10 ss effects pedal for guitar. They bought a bad batch of sanyos that year and every cap in every unit that year died just out of warranty. The 100uf decoupling smd electrolytic caps all reek so bad that I could only remove a few at a time or the wife went nuts because of the stink haha
I, umm, kinda hate to be the one to point this out now, after the fact, but you know that instead of a fancy PCB and everything, you could have just, well, _soldered a wire_ across each of the pairs of pins on those 4-pin capacitors, right?
Seriously great video, though. Some of those graphs are absolutely spectacular at demonstrating really well the differences between all these different types, and why you might want to pick one over another for a particular application. I don't think I've ever seen anything else that did such a good job of explaining it.
The inductance would make a difference for those DC link capacitors even though it is only a few nH. By overlapping the DC plains of the PCB this can be reduced a lot. Thanks a lot!!
I am a total neophyte about this, but I appreciate the glimpse into how much more complex things are that I thought - but I should have known they are.
For audio filters, it would be great to see how bypass caps change things, and whether the main cap and the bypass cap "should" be the same type? I had thought (before watching this video) that smaller caps have lower ESR than larger ones; and that this was why bypass caps are used - but obviously the bypass cap is not lowering the ESR?
If the two are connected in parallel then the smaller cap will have better performance at higher frequencies. While big caps have low ESR they also tend to have more inductance and therefore are less effective at higher frequencies. A mix of several sizes and types is ideal
@@electrarc240 Thanks - it is the more extended treble that comes with using a bypass, that is great. And I would expect the the net ESR is reduced from the parallel caps? I also wonder if audio signal has enough current to significantly heat the caps - and I would suspect that parallel cabs would reduce the heating and/or increase heat dissipation, and improve performance, over a longer time?
@@NeilBlanchard I think apart from class D, capacitors in audio amps probably don't even break a sweat!
@@electrarc240 Okay - and probably the same for crossover caps?
I’d imagine so yeah
What about super/ultra capacitors? Nice video BTW, good stuff.
They're weird... don't really know much about them tbh, but would be a good think to look into at some point for sure
I hope they pay you handsomely at your job. Thank you for this video.
I’m a student placement, so I’m on minimum wage :(
appreciate
Hello. I have an ongoing backyard project which requires for the electronics I build to operate in high humidity environments. I have had success with tantalum capacitors so far, but they can get expensive and I want higher capacitance. Normal electrolytic caps don't maintain their values due to humidity. Luckily, I only need to operate at 12 V, or I wouldn't be able to use tantalum caps either. I've not tried polymer capacitors because I'm a perma-noob and haven't heard of them. Do you know if they're any good for humid environments? Are any of the others? Thank you in advance!
Have you considered using a hermetic case for your PCB? That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about selecting components that can handle extreme conditions.
----II----...This Video Pushed my Capacity...
Where can I buy those polycharge caps? I want them!!!!!
Nowhere at the moment sadly. Unless you own a big company😂. They should be available through all the usual channels in the next six months
You really need a way to measure these capacitors with a DC bias. Many ceramic capacitors capacitance drops off drastically when a DC voltage is applied. Sometimes you only get 20% of the rated capacitance near their rated voltage. Also, some capacitors will act as a microphone. Not a nice behavior in a loud environment.
Yeah I'll look into it for sure
What about three-terminal ceramic capacitors?
Not really power electronics, at least in an energy storage sense. But good for filtering
They are very easy to purchase and replace. I have never paid for such service. I purchase them on a schedule so I’m almost never caught out waiting for a part.
An electrolytic capacitor next to any resistor is basically a time bomb for smoke as anyone who works in electronics knows it's so insane to me how many consumer products have this flaw still