TECHNICAL

INFORMATION

COMPARISON OF MULTILAYER CERAMIC

AND TANTALUM CAPACITORS
by Jeffrey Cain, Ph.D.
AVX Corporation
17th Avenue South
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 29578
jcain@sccoast.net

Abstract:
Engineers now have a choice between ceramic and
tantalum when it comes to selecting capacitors
with values between 0.1 - 22µF. As the ceramic
material technology continues to advance, more
and more capacitance is realized in the same case
sizes compared to previous years. This paper will
examine what devices are available and the trade
off of using each of the technologies. The goal of
this work is to help in selecting the proper device
(tantalum versus ceramic) for a specific
application.
 COMPARISON OF MULTILAYER CERAMIC AND
TANTALUM CAPACITORS
by Jeffrey Cain, Ph.D.
AVX Corporation
17th Avenue South
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 29578
jcain@sccoast.net

Introduction The data shown in Table 1 warrants some comments.

First, one should keep in mind that there is a recom-
Although the construction techniques and materials mended 50% derating of the voltage for tantalum capaci-
used to manufacture multilayer ceramic and tantalum tors. That is a 5V application should use a 10 volt rated
capacitors are completely different, the basic applica- part. Secondly there is a definite trade off in capacitance
tions still remain the same. Capacitors in the 0.1 - 22µF and rated voltage for both technologies. On the tanta-
range are used mainly for digital circuit decoupling and lum side, for example, a C case device rated for 4 volts
filtering. Acting as local supplies of charge, capacitors has a maximum capacitance of 100µF, while a 50V rated
assist power supplies in remaining at a constant DC part has a capacitance of 1µF. A 10V, Y5V ceramic 1206
voltage despite the continuous switching of digital signal chip has a maximum capacitance of 10µF, yet a 50V part
circuitry. Capacitors also function as simple, single pole has a max. cap of only 0.33µF. The X7R and Y5V
filters and can be used in conjunction with other devices dielectrics were chosen because they are widely avail-
(resistors and inductors) to create higher order filter able and can achieve the capacitance ranges required.
circuits. Lastly, tantalums are polar devices so one must be care-
As much as tantalums and ceramics are both capaci- ful how much reverse voltage gets applied as in a DC
tors, they do have many different properties. The case blocking application.
sizes and capacitance values available will first be stud-
ied. The impedance curves, the parasitic inductance Parasitics
(ESL) and equivalent series resistance (ESR) for each
of the technologies will also be outlined. Then the elec- The impedance curve of capacitors can tell a lot about
trical performance under a variety of conditions, such as the performance of the device in an actual circuit. Every
temperature and DC bias, will be examined. capacitor has parasitic ESL and ESR, just simply
because of the physics involved in manufacturing the
This work will focus on the surface mount versions of devices. Both technologies have a finite length and
both ceramics and tantalums only, with the knowledge width of conductor in which the conduction currents
that the only real difference would be the added induc- flow through, therefore they both have inductance
tance form the leads themselves for the thru-hole (ESL). The plates of the ceramic capacitor and the tan-
versions. The intent is to also limit the comparison talum powder have some resistance (ESR). Impedance
to devices of similar capacitance and size. implies real and imaginary parts, and today’s impedance
analyzers (such as an HP4194) measure both magnitude
Products Available and phase and from this one can calculate ESL and
ESR. Fig. 1 shows the magnitude of the impedance as
The following table list the range of devices that well as ESR for 4.7µF, Y5V, 1206, 16V ceramic and a
will be looked at in some detail. This list includes the 4.7µF, 16V, B case tantalum.
extended ranges of both the tantalum and ceramic
technologies. 100
Impedance & ESR (Ohms)

Ceramics Tantalums 10
Case Sizes 0603 (1608M) R - 0805 (2012M) TAJB475M016
0805 (2012M) A - 1206 (3216M) 1 Tantalum ESR Tant. Imp.
1206 (3216M) B - 1411 (3528M)
1210 (3225M) C - 2412 (6026M)
0.1 Ceramic Imp.
Rated Voltage (V) 10 - 500 4 - 50
Dielectric BaTiO 2 Ta2O 5 Ceramic ESR
0.01
Capacitance Range X7R - 0.0001 - 3.3 0.1 - 100 1206YG475M
(µF) Y5V - 0.022 - 22.0 0.001
Polarity Bi-directional Polar 1E+3 1E+4 1E+5 1E+6 1E+7

DC Leakage Current 0.001µA max. 0.5 - 30µA Typical Frequency (Hz)

Fig. 1 - Impedance and ESR curves for 4.7µF tantalum

Table 1 and ceramic capacitors.
 Fig. 1 shows some interesting results. First, one can fairly close to the switching frequency of most power
tell they are the same capacitance value because the supplies, while ceramics are typically not specified or
impedance curves are the same at low frequencies, i.e. are given for resonant frequency only. The following
at 1kHz. The ESR of the ceramics is also much lower table shows the typical ESR at 100kHz and 1MHz for
over most of the frequency spectrum. Lastly, by looking some comparable ceramic and tantalum capacitors.
at the upper end of the frequency spectrum, the ESL of
the ceramic package is also much lower. This is caused AVX Description ESR@100kHz ESR@1MHz
mainly by the lead frames used in the packaging of sur- Part Number (mΩ) (mΩ)
face mount tantalum capacitors. The following table lists TAJA105M016 A case, 1µF, 16V 5000 1500
1206YC105M 16V, 1µF, X7R 2200 25
the measured parasitic inductance for a variety of tanta-
lum and ceramic case sizes. It is interesting to note that TAJA106M010 A case, 10µF, 10V 1600 350
1206ZG106Z 10V, 10µF, Y5V 600 20
capacitance value has almost no effect on the change in
TAJB226M010 B case, 22µF, 10V 1300 1000
inductance. The governing properties are the path 1210ZG226Z 10V, 22µF, Y5V 4 3
length and aspect ratio that the current “sees” flowing
TPSC226M016 C case, 22µF, 10V 300 250
through the capacitor. low ESR tant.
1210ZG226Z 10V, 22µF, Y5V 4 3
Case Size Inductance (pH)
Ceramics Table 4
'0603 850
'0805 1050 As this table demonstrates, ceramics typically
'1206 1250 do have a much lower ESR, especially at higher
'1210 1020 frequencies.
Tantalum
R 1600 DC Bias Dependency
A 2200 Ceramic capacitors are made with high K (permit-
B 2250 tivity) materials which exhibit a change in dielectric
C 2800 constant with an applied DC voltage. Tantalum capaci-
tors do not change capacitance with applied DC bias.
Table 2 Since almost all capacitors are operated with a DC
voltage involved, this is a very important feature to
keep in mind when designing a circuit. Fig. 2 shows the
While ESL remains fairly constant with frequency, DC bias dependency for Y5V and X7R capacitors up to
ESR is very frequency dependent. Both tantalums and rated voltage. This dependency is not really voltage
ceramics have a dissipation factor (DF = ESR x (2␲fc) related, but rather is a phenomena caused by the elec-
that must be met at 120Hz and 1kHz respectively. The tric field between the capacitor layers. A good rule of
following table lists the required maximum DF that thumb is a 15 - 20% loss for X7R at rated voltage and
devices are allowed to meet before being able to ship to 75 - 80% for Y5V, regardless of the rated voltage. A
a customer. linear fit in between works quite nicely for a first order
approximation.
Tantalum DF Test Frequency
120
C <= 1.0µF 4% 120
C > 1.0µF 6% 120 100 16V, X7R
% Capacitance

Ceramic, X7R 80
50V and 100V 2.5% 1000
60
25V 3% 1000
16V 3.5% 1000 40
16V, Y5V
10V 5% 1000 20
Ceramic, Y5V 0
25V and 50V 5% 1000 0 4 8 12 16

26V 7% 1000 DC Voltage (V)

10V 10% 1000 Fig. 2 - % change capacitance vs. DC bias voltage for
Y5V and X7R ceramic capacitors.
Table 3
Temperature Dependency
Unfortunately in the real world, most electronic cir- Once again, by their very nature ceramic and tanta-
cuits do not operate at 120Hz or 1kHz. Maximum ESR lum capacitors change capacitance over temperature.
for tantalum capacitors is specified at 100kHz, as this is X7R and Y5V EIA are coding sequences that describe
how the capacitance changes over temperature. X7R From table 5, the power handling of the ceramics is
stands for ±15% change from -85°C to +125°C and Y5V typically much better than the tantalums. Keep in mind
+22 to -82% from -30°C to +85°C. Fig. 3 shows the that the ESR of ceramics is also typically lower (see
change in capacitance for both tantalums and ceramics. table 4), so more current can be driven through the
It should be noted that the temperature and DC capacitor (P=I2R).
bias effects are cumulative and not exclusively
independent.
Microphonic Effects
40 Of much less concern, yet still important, especially
20 in audio applications, is the microphonic or piezoelectric
Tantalum
effect. Barium titinate which is the base ceramic
% Capacitance

0
material for most dielectric systems will exhibit micro-
-20 X7R phonic effects. It is not very difficult to take a Y5V
-40 capacitor and put a DC bias with a small signal 1kHz
Y5V sine wave and get the capacitor to “sing”. Tantalum
-60
capacitors exhibit no microphonic effects. The experi-
-80 ment done by AVX involved the opposite phenomena
-100 whereby the part was shaken while under bias and the
-60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 resulting generated voltage was measured. This was
Temperature °C done for a series of 1µF devices and the results are
Fig. 3 - Typical temperature dependency for tantalum shown in Fig. 4. While this experiment does not give an
and ceramic capacitors. empirical number, the resulting relative voltage genera-
tion tells the story. This experiment confirms that the
higher the K of the ceramic capacitor, the worse the
Ripple Current Capability microphonic effect becomes.
Power supply designers are often concerned about 1000
the ripple current capabilities of capacitors on both the
input and output sides of converters. The biggest con- 300
Output (uV/ustrain)

cern is the internal temperature rise caused by the I2R 100

Y5V
power consumption of the capacitor. Since tantalums are 30
a polar device, this ripple should always be accompanied 10
by a DC bias. Since ESR is so dependent on frequency
X7R
and temperature, the power ratings listed should be 3
viewed as rules of thumb and not laws written in stone. 1
The tantalum capacitors have a published data set for a Tantalum
0.3
10°C rise above the ambient. The experimental set-up 0.1
used to arrive at this number was emulated and done for 0.03 0.1 0.3 1 3 10 30
a series of ceramic capacitor chips. It should be noted DC Bias Voltage (V)
that different mounting techniques can alter the ther- Fig. 4 - Microphonic effect of surface mount capacitors.
mal conductivity greatly (see Ref. 1). The following
table lists the empirical data from this experiment.
Conclusions
Max. power
Case Size Dielectric dissipation (W) There is no simple answer to the question of when
for 10°⌬C one can replace a tantalum with a ceramic, or visa versa.
Tantalum The parameters that the capacitor will see during its
A 0.08
lifetime need to be examined carefully. The benefits and
highlights are listed in the table below.
B 0.09
C 0.11 Important Parameter Tantalum Ceramic
Ceramics ESR/Output ripple X
1206 X7R 0.27 Volumetric efficiency X
'0805 0.24 Wide temperature range X
1206 Y5V 0.2 Low inductance X
'0805 0.18 DC bias X
Table 5 Microphonic X
High frequency filtering X
Table 6
 One cannot just blindly replace one type of capacitor
technology with another and expect equal performance
offer all conditions. General knowledge of what the
circuit will see must be taken into consideration.

References
(1) I. Salisbury, “Thermal management of surface
mounted tantalum capacitors”, AVX Tech. Bulletin,
Nov. 1992.
(2) J. Cain, “Parasitic inductance of multilayer ceramic
capacitors”, AVX Tech. Bulletin, June 1997.

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recommendations to infringe any patent. The user should not assume that all safety measures are indicated or that other measures may not be required. Specifications
are typical and may not apply to all applications.
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