The Raspberry Pi Foundation replaced two 1206 MLCCs with just one of Panasonic Industry Europe’s Polymer SP capacitors that contributes to the performance and reliability of the newly developed Raspberry Pi 4. With a compact housing of only 7.3 x 4.3 x 1.9 mm and a capacitance value of 100µF as well as low ESR characteristics (15mΩ max.) the SP capacitor helped optimizing the design processes as well as the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi 4. MLCCs cannot achieve the same high capacitance as polymer for the same given footprint and volume. Also MLCCs exhibit strong capacitance dependence on DC bias due to ferroelectric dielectric materials used for MLCCs. The capacitance of these devices varies with applied DC voltage which can lead to a capacity drop of more than 70% compared to the given specs on the data sheet. For polymer capacitors the capacitance does not vary significantly when the application voltage changes. These advantages allowed a lower part count using SP-CAP with better capacitance range and temperature profile instead of MLCCs for Raspberry Pi 4 model, which not only saved space on the PCB but also was a cost factor by saving costs on parts and reducing the production steps.
The red square shows the Polymer SP capacitor from Panasonic Industry Europe on the PCB of the latest Raspberry Pi.
Please find a video that shows the advantages of Polymer SP capacitors over MLCCs here:
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