All solid capacitors ???

[Some Guy]

Gigabyte is making a big deal about their motherboards having "all
solid capacitors".

Is this some new type of capacitor technology, or are they saying
that they don't use electrolytic (paper?) capacitors?

 

[Mikkel Lund]

Al skrev:

Uhh, isn't a tantalum capacitor also solid? (Except, of course, for the
old ones filled with sulphuric acid.)

Al

Yes, but the thing about these capacitors is that they do not contain
acid as the normal electrolytic capacitors.


--
Hilsen Mikkel Lund
"Sund fornuft, har aldrig stoppet en tosse"
Jokeren i "Mćnds ruin"

 

[Al]

In article <45bbb0e4$0$49197$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
Mikkel Lund <mmlu03@space.aau.dk> wrote:

Some Guy skrev:
Gigabyte is making a big deal about their motherboards having "all
solid capacitors".

Is this some new type of capacitor technology, or are they saying
that they don't use electrolytic (paper?) capacitors?

http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4429
This might explain it.

Uhh, isn't a tantalum capacitor also solid? (Except, of course, for the
old ones filled with sulphuric acid.)

Al

 

[Mikkel Lund]

Some Guy skrev:

Gigabyte is making a big deal about their motherboards having "all
solid capacitors".

Is this some new type of capacitor technology, or are they saying
that they don't use electrolytic (paper?) capacitors?

http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4429
This might explain it.

--
Hilsen Mikkel Lund
"Sund fornuft, har aldrig stoppet en tosse"
Jokeren i "Mćnds ruin"

 

[Dave Platt]

Gigabyte is making a big deal about their motherboards having "all
solid capacitors".

Is this some new type of capacitor technology, or are they saying
that they don't use electrolytic (paper?) capacitors?

They're presumably referring to solid-electrolyte capacitors. Rather
than using a electrolyte, these use a solid material, such as
manganese dioxide or an organic semiconductor (e.g. Vishay's OS-CON).

This would presumably result in a longer useful lifetime (MTBF) for
the motherboards. Boards of this sort would be immune to the
bad-electrolytic-capacitor plague which caused premature failure of
numerous consumer-electronics devices a few years ago (a stolen,
incomplete, and thus unstable liquid electrolyte formula caused many
'lytics to gas, swell, and leak their guts out).

Even electrolytics made with a proper liquid electrolyte do have a
limited lifetime, especially at high temperatures - the electrolyte
slowly loses water vapor through the case and seals. Solid-
electrolyte caps would not have this failure mechanism, although I
imagine that they could turn out to have other (perhaps novel) ways of
dying after a few years.

Tantalum-bead caps are an older form of solid cap, and were (and still
are, I think) used extensively in applications needing a lot of bypass
capacitance in a small space, with good high-temperature performance.
Some of them are notorious for developing internal short circuits
after a couple of decades... apparently the tantalum can grow
"whiskers" which short out the electrodes. This is perhaps the
commonest failure mechanism for (e.g.) Tektronix 4xx-series
oscilloscopes and some Wavetek RF gear... a tantalum cap shorts out
internally and pulls down one of the DC supply rails. If enough
current is available from the supply, the shorted cap can go BANG in
an impressive fashion.


--
Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

 

[Eeyore]

Some Guy wrote:

Gigabyte is making a big deal about their motherboards having "all
solid capacitors".

Is this some new type of capacitor technology, or are they saying
that they don't use electrolytic (paper?) capacitors?

Newish technology.

They're electrolytics still though, just a wholly different type but with much
longer working life too.

The problem in standard electrolytics is the liquid electrolyte which eventually
dries up.

Graham