Polymer Cap Charge Pump

RE: Polymer Cap Charge Pump

dougw — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 23:24:32 GMT

Also added an unboxing video of the finisher prize - thanks element14 and Panasonic.

RE: Polymer Cap Charge Pump

jc2048 — Mon, 13 May 2019 09:58:52 GMT

Interesting blog and experiment. That's a nice illustration of the way the polymer caps retain their capacitance with voltage.

Few quick thoughts:

If you wanted to try it at much lower frequencies, you could do it by moving further down the 4040 outputs - there are lots of them to choose from!

The 4040 is a ripple counter, so doesn't it glitch a bit when you combine two stages in this way (I can't quite see what you're doing with the half bridge, so maybe not)?

Personally, I think I'd be more interested in seeing the behaviour as you go up in frequency. Do you have a reasonable function generator? If so, you could sweep the frequency upwards, slowly, and see how the polymers compared to the ceramics. I assume that initially it would improve things, as more charge got transferred, and then it would fall off as the capacitors were unable to move the charge in the time available, but it would be interesting to see how it worked in practice and how the polymers compared to the ceramics.

RE: Polymer Cap Charge Pump

three-phase — Sun, 12 May 2019 20:49:13 GMT

Interesting video regarding the different types of meters out there and the test signals they apply to the capacitors. Will be interesting to see the results of the tests on your circuit.

Kind regards.

RE: Polymer Cap Charge Pump

jw0752 — Sun, 12 May 2019 04:14:23 GMT

Hi Doug,

I found your blog very interesting and I enjoyed seeing the difference between the different meters and how they measure the capacitance.

John

RE: Polymer Cap Charge Pump

shabaz — Sun, 12 May 2019 04:08:34 GMT

Hi Doug,

This sounds like a great project! It's nice to see a novel approach to such building blocks.

There used to be a charge pump with almost every microcontroller project at one time : ) to generate the high voltage to program the Flash memory : ) But nowadays there are still plenty of new reasons to have high voltages, such as driving OLED screens and backlights, so your project is very interesting.