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How A Capacitor Is Made: Ote: The Stuff On This Page Isn't Completely Critical For Electronics Beginners To

A capacitor is made of two conductive metal plates separated by an insulating dielectric material. When current flows into a capacitor, the charges get stored on the plates due to the dielectric preventing their flow. The capacitance depends on the plate area, distance between plates, and dielectric material used. More overlapping plate area or a dielectric with higher relative permittivity increases capacitance, while greater distance between plates decreases it.

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57 views2 pages

How A Capacitor Is Made: Ote: The Stuff On This Page Isn't Completely Critical For Electronics Beginners To

A capacitor is made of two conductive metal plates separated by an insulating dielectric material. When current flows into a capacitor, the charges get stored on the plates due to the dielectric preventing their flow. The capacitance depends on the plate area, distance between plates, and dielectric material used. More overlapping plate area or a dielectric with higher relative permittivity increases capacitance, while greater distance between plates decreases it.

Uploaded by

Adil Mahmud
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ote: The stuff on this page isnt completely critical for electronics beginners to

understandand it gets a little complicated towards the end. We recommend reading


the How a Capacitor is Made section, the others could probably be skipped if they give
you a headache.

How a Capacitor Is Made


The schematic symbol for a capacitor actually closely resembles how its made. A
capacitor is created out of two metal plates and an insulating material called a dielectric.
The metal plates are placed very close to each other, in parallel, but the dielectric sits
between them to make sure they dont touch.

Your standard capacitor sandwich: two metal plates separated by an insulating dielectric.
The dielectric can be made out of all sorts of insulating materials: paper, glass, rubber,
ceramic, plastic, or anything that will impede the flow of current.
The plates are made of a conductive material: aluminum, tantalum, silver, or other
metals. Theyre each connected to a terminal wire, which is what eventually connects to
the rest of the circuit.

The capacitance of a capacitor how many farads it has depends on how its
constructed. More capacitance requires a larger capacitor. Plates with more overlapping
surface area provide more capacitance, while more distance between the plates means
less capacitance. The material of the dielectric even has an effect on how many farads a
cap has. The total capacitance of a capacitor can be calculated with the equation:

Where r is the dielectrics relative permittivity (a constant value determined by the


dielectric material), A is the amount of area the plates overlap each other, and d is the
distance between the plates.

How a Capacitor Works


Electric current is the flow of electric charge, which is what electrical components
harness to light up, or spin, or do whatever they do. When current flows into a capacitor,
the charges get stuck on the plates because they cant get past the insulating dielectric.
Electrons negatively charged particles are sucked into one of the plates, and it
becomes overall negatively charged. The large mass of negative charges on one plate
pushes away like charges on the other plate, making it positively charged.

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