Kingtronics Blog

Tantalum Capacitors are inherently polar devices and may be permanently damaged or destroyed if connected with the wrong polarity. The positive terminal is identified on the capacitor body by a polarity mark and the capacitor body may include an obvious geometrical shape.

However, some Series contain two capacitors connected (negative-to-negative) to form “non-polar” capacitors. Rated voltage  may be applied to these Series in either direction.

The fundamental electrical properties of multilayer ceramic capacitors are as follows:

Polarity: Multilayer ceramic capacitors are not polar, and may be used with DC voltage applied in either direction.

Rated Voltage: This term refers to the maximum con tinuous DC working voltage permissible across the entire operating temperature range. Multilayer ceramic capacitors are not extremely sensitive to voltage, and brief applications of voltage above rated will not result in immediate failure. However, reliability will be reduced by exposure to sustained voltages above rated.

Like all other practical capacitors, multilayer ceramic capacitors also have resistance and inductance. A simplified schematic for the equivalent circuit is shown in Figure 1. Other significant electrical characteristics resulting from these additional properties are as follows：

Impedance: Since the parallel resistance (Rp) normally very high, the total impedance of the capacitor is ：

The variation of a capacitor’s impedance with frequency determines its effectiveness in many applications.