Polymer Capacitor Quiz

Three quiz attempts and I got there with a lucky guess. Think I need to stick to motor start capacitors.

Yes, it's disgraceful the way us humans dig up the planet for raw materials and leave the mess behind as pollution.

The quest for the mighty dollar outweighs our responsibility to keep the planet in a pristine state.

Organic Aluminium capacitor and Organic Aluminium Polymer hybrid capactors are already commercially available from Panasonic and other manufacturers.

Apparently the Polymer Hybrids have low ESR and long life but I haven't tested them extensively.

organic Aluminum capacitors

Polymer or Polymer Electrolytics are organic. Some manufacturers include “organic” in their name/description, some don’t.

There are both polymer aluminum and polymer tantalum. The aluminums come in a chip and can style while Polymer Tantalums only come in chip style. For maximum capactiance in a package size tantalum is still significantly more “volumetrically efficient.”

Keep in mind with either type, the “organic polymer” is the cathode layer, not the dielectric.

You’ll probably find this intro polymer video helpful.

“It is estimated that there are less than 50 years left of tantalum resources”

That estimate is out of date and wildly inaccurate. When it first surfaced (excuse the pun) there were a very limited number of mines in operation. Since that statement was made, mines in multiple parts of the world have been discovered. Currently, most of them are not in operation for economic reasons. (Other sources are much cheaper.)

Ironically, another reason that statement is out of date is because when it was made, it was predicted tantalum usage would decline faster than it did. However, heavy polymer-tantalum usage in tablets and mobile phones has kept its usage relatively high.

Great info there. I am really happy how some passives have improved.

Recently used 10uf MLCC for a project and they are very small! I used

to use polarized Aluminum caps for inputs, so this is pretty nice, and not

too expensive even on Mouser. A friend was telling me about "organic

Aluminum capacitors" to replace Tants. Anyone know about these?

"It is estimated that there are less than 50 years left of tantalum resources,

based on extraction at current rates."

Something to think about...

Thanks danzima I just had a very niceelement14 presents t-shirt greet me from my Scotland trip. I shall wear it with geeky pride!

Interesting Quiz useful for learning and for selecting the best capacitor in our applications. Thanks.

Interesting different way of doing the training - and I liked the way that I end up with a few downloaded reference materials that will actually be useful in my work. I will certainly pay more attention to the use of this kind of capacitor - in particular in the high efficiency DC-DC converter circuits that keep cropping up these days. But things certainly have moved on, so this was a useful refresher for this professional design engineer.

I've just had a very nice, black retro Ben Heck T-shirt arrive in the post - many thanks to danzima and rscasny

Rod

Very informative.  Thanks for the intro.

Good Quiz, I have learned a lot.