What Ceramic Capacitors Are and How They Work

The capacity of a capacitor is to store electrical energy. It is for this reason that the word capacitor is derived. Electricity is stored in capacitors through circuits.

A power factor’s role as a power storage device in power circuits cannot be understated. After batteries, capacitors are the only sources of electrical power storage. Furthermore, capacitors improve the quality of electrical power while storing it.

Although capacitors play a key role in electronic circuitry, their function varies widely. The development of miniature capacitors for electronic circuits has been enabled by the use of ceramics, which is why ceramic capacitors have been developed.

The most commonly used capacitors are high voltage ceramic capacitors, despite the fact that they are available in many different types and capacities. We shall discuss only ceramic capacitors in the following section.

Capacitors made from ceramics are known as ceramic capacitors.

In general, it is comprised of layers of foils / plates with a fixed capacitance value in micro or pico farads, separated by layers of ceramic dielectric.

Because ceramic is non conductive and nonmetallic and is capable of retaining electrical charge in extreme temperatures, it is being used as an ideal medium.

Ceramic capacitors: polarity and symbol

This ceramic capacitor has a non-polar nature and can be used with a wide range of voltages (AC/DC). A ceramic capacitor is universally recognized by the symbol shown below.

Ceramic capacitor construction

The superior dielectric and insulating properties of ceramics made them ideal for capacitors. Ceramics are particularly suitable for capacitors due to their properties.

Capacitors come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Surface areas of electrodes (plates) greatly influence the capacitance of electrodes.

As a result of the multi-layer construction, the device has a higher capacitance and is compact and small.

This could also be achieved by a parallel connection. These types of capacitors are also called multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC).

In the figure above, a multilayer ceramic capacitor is shown with electrodes separated by ceramics and electrolytes. Ceramic capacitors may also have a chip or dish shape, and their capacitance can be measured in pico- and nanofarads (a unit for measuring capacitance).

A dish-type construction made up of two small circular dishes is filled with ceramic between the two electrodes.

Capacitors made of ceramic

Ceramic capacitors and ceramic dielectrics can be compared using both their characteristics (monolithic vs. multilayer) and construction (monolithic vs. multilayer).

Titanium dioxide is mixed with additives to give ceramic capacitors their desired characteristics.

Among their characteristics are miniaturization, high voltage handling, and accuracy in capacitance measurement. A broad spectrum of frequency applications can be achieved with multilayer ceramic capacitors.

Changing the dielectric composition allows us to manufacture capacitors with the least amount of variation in capacitance over a wide range of temperatures.

Such capacitors are known as temperature compensated capacitors. Moreover, ceramic capacitors can be designed to perform well under wide frequency variations as well as with high dielectric constants.