A tantalum electrolytic capacitor is one of the passive components of an electronic circuit. It comprises of a pellet of permeable metals of tantalum (anode) which is covered all around by an insulating oxide layer forming the dielectric. It is covered solid or even liquid electrolytes (cathode). The tantalum capacitor has a very thin and comparatively high permittivity dielectric layer and because of this, it is much better than other capacitors in having high Capacitance/Volume as well as lower weight.

Tantalum is known to be a conflict mineral. The Tantalum Electrolytic Capacitors are found to be more costly than the Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors.

Tantalum capacitors are intrinsically polarized segments. If the reverse voltage is applied then the capacitors may get destroyed. Bipolar or Non-polar Tantalum Capacitors can be made by adequately interfacing two capacitors which are polarized in series, with the anode having an orientation in the opposite direction.

Basic Construction of Solid Tantalum Electrolytic Capacitors

A Tantalum Capacitor is basically a chip capacitor which consists of tantalum powder pressed and compacted into a pellet and forms the anode of the capacitors. The oxide layer of tantalum pentoxide forms the dielectric and the cathode is a solid manganese dioxide electrolyte.

Types of Tantalum Capacitors

The Tantalum Electrolytic Capacitors are made up in 3 different styles:

• Axial Leaded Tantalum Capacitors – This kind of capacitor is generally used in medical, space and military applications.
• Tantalum “pearls” single-ended style (resin-dipped) used for PCB mounting.
• Tantalum Chip Capacitors – It has an SMD style and is used for surface mounting. Eighty percent of all Tantalum Capacitors are SMDs.

Chip Capacitors

As said above, more than eighty percent of Tantalum Electrolytic Capacitors are made in SMD style as Tantalum Chip Capacitors. The end faces consist of contact surfaces, furthermore, is fabricated in various sizes. One can identify different sizes using case code letters. For some of them which have been fabricated for a long time, the measurements and case coding overall makes are still to a great extent equivalent. But due to the new features of Tantalum Electrolytic Capacitors, like the “face down” technique to decrease inductance and the multi-anode technique to decrease the ESR has resulted in a much broader range of chip sizes and case codes. These takeoffs from EIA benchmarks mean gadgets from various producers are never again constantly uniform.

Wet Tantalum Capacitors

One of the main characteristics of the modern days Wet (non-solid) Tantalum Electrolytic Capacitor is the energy density they have as compared to the Wet Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors and Solid Tantalum Capacitors. The self-healing property in them enables the formation of dielectric thickness with a much lower safety margin. In addition to that, Wet Tantalum Capacitors can be operated at an excess voltage from 100 V to 630 V. Apart from that it has the lowest leakage current and a relatively low ESR than all other electrolytic capacitors.

Hope you liked the article on Tantalum Capacitors. Brands that manufacture these types of capacitors are Kemet, Vishay, and AVX. Make sure to check them out using the links as provided.

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