The Difference Between Ceramic Chip Capacitor and Electrolytic Capacitor

Ceramic chip capacitor is a kind of capacitor which is made of ceramic material, coated with a metal film on the ceramic surface and then sintered at high temperature as an electrode. Ceramic chip capacitors are often used as circuit capacitors and pad capacitors in high stability oscillation circuits, which play the role of filtering, decoupling, signal coupling and so on. The ceramic chip capacitor has small capacity, high voltage resistance and good stability. It is used in high voltage and high frequency circuits. The ceramic chip capacitance has no polarity and the equivalent series inductance is small. The ceramic chip capacitor has good high frequency characteristic and is mostly used in high frequency circuit. Ceramic chip capacitor can filter high frequency ripple, so it can be used as high pass filter. Ceramic chip capacitors can be used in pure AC circuits.

Electrolytic capacitor is composed of metal foil (aluminum / tantalum) as positive electrode and insulating oxide layer of metal foil (alumina / tantalum pentoxide) as dielectric. A capacitor is formed by a cathode of conductive materials, electrolytes, and other materials. Electrolytic capacitors are used to filtering, decoupling, signal coupling, time constant setting and DC isolation in middle and low frequency circuits. Electrolytic capacitor has large capacity, but not high voltage, unstable capacity and a short life. It is used in low voltage and low frequency circuits. The electrolytic capacitor has stepwise property, the equivalent series inductance is large.

 Ceramic capacitors have a small capacity, high pressure resistance, good quality, and are used in high voltage and high frequency circuits. The ceramic chip capacitance has no polarity and the equivalent series inductance is small. Electrolytic capacitors have large capacity, but are not resistant to high voltage, have unstable capacity, and have a short lifetime. They are used in low-voltage and low-frequency circuits. Electrolytic capacitors are graded and their equivalent series inductance is large.