Capacitor families
There are several families of capacitors:
- Electrochemical or electrolytic capacitor to achieve high capacitances of several µFarads. It is used in power supplies as a smoothing function, also energy storage for saving data in RAM memories as well as long-term timing of RC circuits.
- Tantalum capacitor: allows high capacity in a particularly small footprint. Its characteristics remain more constant over time and very stable at temperature.
- Plastic film capacitor (polyester polystyrene, polycarbonate, polypropylene). Plastic film capacitors have excellent performance. Losses are reduced with very low parasitic inductance. These characteristics make them particularly suitable for applications with very high surge currents and high frequencies.
- Mica capacitor, used in applications requiring high degrees of precision, stability and reliability. They are commonly used in high frequency applications since they have qualities that allow them to provide low loss and low variation in capacitance over time.
- SMD Capacitor (Surface Mounted Components) with multiple applications: High frequency communications, portable wireless products, battery powered products
Capacitor association:
- Parallel connection: The capacity equivalent to a group of capacitors in parallel is equal to the sum of the capacities of the different capacitors: Ceq = C1 + C2 + C3
- Series connection: The reciprocal of the capacitance equivalent to a group of capacitors in series is equal to the sum of the reciprocals of the capacitances of the different capacitors: 1/Ceq= 1/C1 + 1/C2 + 1/C3