A Temperature Compensator Crystal Oscillator or a TCXO is a crystal oscillator that is designed to withstand high-temperature conditions. In a regular crystal oscillator the oscillation frequency fluctuates with the rise in temperature. The consequence of this is an unstable oscillation frequency. TCXO supports a stable oscillation frequency at high temperatures. For this, they take the help of a temperature compensation network which balances out the oscillation frequency at higher temperatures.

Performance figure of TCXO

Some of the most important performance figures of TCXO are as follows:

• Power Dissipation – The dissipation of power in a TCXO will be much greater as compared to an ordinary oscillator keeping in view of the additional circuitry needed. In addition to that the cost becomes greater. It should also be kept in mind that the cost is greater. It is also worth remembering that it will take a short period after start-up for the oscillator to stabilize. This might be of the order 100 ms, or conceivably more, subordinate upon the plan.

• TCXO PPM performance – As said earlier, the performance of TCXO temperature is much better as compared to a normal crystal oscillator. Ordinarily, figures of somewhere in the range of 10 and 40 times improvement can regularly be seen. Figures that are better than +1.5 (or -1.5) ppm over a temperature range of 0 to 70 degrees Celsius are much harder to achieve as they at that point fall into a high exactness classification where costs increment essentially.

• TCXO package – TCXOs can be supplied in several packages depending upon the requirements of the end-user as well as the way they have been designed. The most well-known type of development is to build the circuit on a little printed circuit board that can be housed in a plat metal bundle. This is then reasonable for mounting onto the fundamental circuit leading body of the general hardware. As the crystal is sealed itself, this implies fixing of the general TCXO bundle isn't basic, or even required for most applications.

• Output format and level - With numerous TCXOs being utilized for driving advanced circuits, a large portion of the little oscillator bundles produce what is named a clipped sine wave. This is suitable for driving a logic circuit, but in many instances it is recommended to put it through a logic buffer to make sure that it is sufficiently square. The output is generally an open collector circuit. On the off chance that a sine wave output is needed, at that point this must be picked at the start and it will confine the decision accessible.

• Power Requirements – The actual requirement of power depends on the particular device. Many works from provisions of 3 V, and may draw as meager as 2 mA, even though this will rely on the general kind, the producer and the specific gadget picked.

This was all we have regarding the TCXO oscillator. Hope you liked going through it. Brands that manufacture them are ABRACON, TXC Corporation, and AVX. Check them out using the links as provided.

View all our TCXO Oscillator

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.

View all our Tantalum Capacitors - Solid Leaded

An ultracapacitor or a supercapacitor is a type of capacitor that has a much higher capacitance value than any other capacitor. However, the voltage limits of these capacitors are quite low, which shortens the distance between rechargeable batteries and electrolytic capacitors. It is to be noted that the supercapacitors can store twenty to a hundred times more energy per unit mass or volume than electrolytic capacitors. It has also got a feature of delivering and accepting charge in a much faster manner than batteries. In addition to that, it can withstand several other discharge cycles and charge than rechargeable batteries.

 Supercapacitors have found its uses mainly in those applications that need rapid charge or discharge cycles, instead of long period smaller vitality stockpiling – in trains, automobiles, cranes, elevators, and buses, where they are utilized for energy storage for short term, boost mode power delivery or for regenerative braking. Smaller units of supercapacitors are used in the backup of memory for SRAM (Static Random Access Memory).

In contrast with ordinary capacitors, supercapacitors do not take the help of conventional solid dielectric, but, they utilize electrochemical pseudocapacitance as well as electrostatic double-layer capacitance. The two of which add to the net capacitance of the capacitor, with some differences:

• Electrochemical pseudocapacitors – It uses conducting polymer or metal oxide electrodes having a large value of electrochemical pseudocapacitance in addition to the double-layer capacitance. Pseudocapacitance can be achieved by Faradaic electron charge transfer with intercalation, electrosorption or redox reactions.
• Electrostatic double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) – utilizes carbon electrodes having a much higher value of double-layer capacitance than electrochemical pseudocapacitance, accomplishing division of charge in a Helmholtz double layer at the interface between the electrolyte and the conductive electrode’s surface. The charge separation is of the order of angstroms (0.3 to 0.8nm). This value is much smaller than that of a conventional capacitor.
• Hybrid capacitors, like the lithium-ion capacitor, take the help of electrodes that come with different characteristics: one showing up mostly the electrochemical capacitance while the other showing up mostly the electrostatic capacitance.

An ionic conductive connection is formed by the electrolyte between both the electrodes which separates them from capacitors with conventional electrolytes (dielectric layer always exists), and the purported electrolyte, e.g., MnO2 or conducting polymer. These capacitors are polarized by design with symmetric electrodes, or, asymmetric electrodes, by a potential applied during its manufacture.

Basic Design

Supercapacitors come with 2 electrodes which are separated by an ion-permeable membrane, as well as by an electrolyte ionically summing both electrodes. Whenever a voltage is applied to the electrodes, it gets polarized and thus, the ions present in the electrolyte form an electric double layer of polarity that is opposite to that of the electrode.

This was all we have regarding Supercapacitors or Ultracapacitors. Hope you liked going through it. Brands that manufacture them are

AVX, Kemet and PowerStor. Make sure to check them out using the links as provided. Thank you for reading.

View all our Supercapacitors/Ultracapacitors

A ceramic capacitor is regarded as the fixed value capacitor where the dielectric is a ceramic material. It is made up of alternating 2 or more layers of ceramic as well as a layer of metal that behaves like an electrode. The piece of the ceramic material characterizes electrical conduct and consequently applications. Ceramic capacitors can be categorized into 2 application classes:

• Class 1 Ceramic Capacitors – This type of ceramic capacitors provide low losses and high stability for resonant circuit applications.
• Class 2 Ceramic Capacitors – It provides high volumetric efficiency for coupling, by-pass, and buffer applications.

Ceramic capacitors mostly the Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors - MLCC are one of that electrical equipment that is the most used ones. They are available in different sizes and shapes and are utilized in capacitors for EMI / RFI suppression, power capacitors for transmitters and as feed-through capacitors.

MLCC

An MLCC or Multi-Layered Ceramic Capacitors comes with several separate capacitors that are grouped together in parallel and are contacted using the terminal surface. The materials used for making MLCC chips are a mixture of ferroelectric or paraelectric (finely ground granules) with some precisely decided added substances. Both of them are mixed together to form a homogeneous mixture. The size of the powder as well as the composition of the mixture (small as 10nm) shows the expertise of the manufacturer.

A thin foil of ceramic is cast from a suspension of the powder with an appropriate binder. This ceramic foil is then rolled up for transport. It is then unrolled. After this, they are divided into sheets of equal size which are screen printed using a paste of metal. Now, these sheets are our electrodes. These sheets are grouped together in layers and pressure is applied which can be solidified on the application of pressure in an automated process. Along with the relative permittivity, the number and size of the layers help in deciding the value of capacitance. The electrodes are grouped in an alternate arrangement somewhat balanced from the abutting layers with the goal that they each can later be associated on the offset side, one right, one left. The stack that is layered is cut into small individual components. High mechanical exactness is required.

After the cutting process is over, the binder is worn out of the stack. This is trailed by sintering at temperatures somewhere in the range of 1,200 and 1,450 °C creating the last, essentially crystalline, structure. The burning process then makes up the needed dielectric properties. Cleaning and metallization are succeeded in the burning process. With the help of the metallization process, the inner and the ends electrodes get connected in parallel and the terminal is provided to the capacitor. At last, a 100% estimating of the electrical qualities will be finished.

This was all we have regarding MLCC. Hope you liked going through it. Brands that manufacture them are Kemet, AVX and TDK. Make sure to follow them using the links as provided. Thanks for reading.

View all our Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors MLCC – Leaded