From now, you´ll find in our store the top-quality capacitors from company AVX.
A tantalum capacitor may be for many designers a component with a “smell of alchemy”. It´s not used as often as for example electrolytic capacitors, it´s more expensive and it doesn´t hesitate to fire off at improper handling. Despite these facts, it´s used in many devices and features several advantages, which predestinate it to many applications.
Among main advantages of tantalum capacitors belong small dimensions, temperature stability (C vs. t), very long lifetime (self-repair ability), relatively low serial resistance (ESR) and virtually no dependence of capacity on a DC voltage. Their usage is for these and other reasons beneficial in switch-mode power supplies, digital circuits (processors) in a measurement equipment etc.
Tantalum capacitors strictly require observing a maximum ripple current and also a maximum operating voltage. A low ESR can be a cause of extremely high inrush current after connecting to a hard power supply (for example a battery), which is able to damage a capacitor. From this reason, it´s advisable to design a circuit in a way, that this inrush current was limited, or not to use tantalum capacitors as the first – input capacitors.
When these basic requirements are observed, tantalum capacitors will reward us with reliability and long-term stable parameters.
For more detail: Tantalum capacitors from the world-class producer on stock