THE UNIVERSITY OF LARKANO SINDH-PAKISTAN

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONIC ENGNEERING

Electronic Workshop (1st Term, 1st Year)

WORKSHOP NO. 5

DIFFERENTIATE DIFFERENT TYPES OF CAPACITORS, THEIR CODING,

TYPES, MEASUREMENT AND FAULT DETECTION

Name of Student: Roll No:

Date Signature of Instructor:

LAB. HANDOUT EXPERIMENTAL SETUP PROCEDURE RESULT ANALYSIS TOTAL POINTS

(10 Points) (50 Points) (20 Points) (10 Points) (10 Points) (100 Points)

Objective:
 To be come familiar with capacitors
 To become familiar with different types of capacitor
 To be come familiar with capacitor coding
 To check faulty/good capacitor

Equipment & Materials:

 Few Electrolytic and non-electrolytic capacitors
 Digital Multimeter

Theory:

 Introduction:
A capacitor is an electronic component used to store electric charge. Together with resistors and
inductors, it is the most frequently used component in electronics. Capacitors are made up of two
metallic plates having an insulator (also called a Dielectric) in between them, which enables it to
store charges in the form of an electric field. The kind of dielectric used along with several other
factors, determines how much charge the capacitor can store. Whenever the terminals of a
capacitor are connected across a battery, there is a deficiency of electrons on one plate and an
excess of electrons on the other. This creates a potential difference between the two plates and
gives rise to an electric field. The capacity of a Capacitor to store charges is known as its
capacitance which has the unit Farad (F), however, Farad is typically a big unit and one usually
talks about capacitance in much smaller units such as µF, nF and pF etc.
 Types of capacitors:
There are two types of capacitors, Electrolytic and Non Electrolytic(symbols shown below).

Figure5.1:Symbol of Electrolytic(a)Non-Electrolytic (b)Capacitors

 Electrolytic capacitors:
Electrolytic capacitors are polarized in that they need to be connected the correct way round(+ve
supply to +ve terminal and –ve supply to –ve terminal) to charge them. They come in large as
well as small values but are usually greater than 1µf. They come in two main types; one consists
of metal foils with oxide insulators (electrolytic) and hence is simply called an Electrolytic
Capacitor. The other type of polarized capacitors is Tantalum capacitors. The positive end is
marked by a “+” and the negative lead is marked by a “-“. Since these capacitors are usually
physically large, their values are printed on them along with their voltage ratings and tolerances.
Electrolytic capacitors are used for filtering out ripples in DC power supplies.

 Non-electrolytic capacitors:
Non-Electrolytic capacitors on the other hand can be charged with any polarity and are thus non-
polarized. They use Mica, Glass, Paper, Ceramic, Porcelain, Polycarbonate and Wax as the
dielectric and are usually less than 1µf. They are usually used in AC circuits along with resistors
and inductors to perform mathematical operations and filtering.

 Testing a capacitor:
Ideal capacitors have infinite resistance. Real capacitors show a very high resistance in the order
of 100’s of Kilo Ohms, infact this is one way to check whether a capacitor is faulty or not. When
connected across a multimeter, with the range set to measure up to 1MΩ, a working capacitor
would show zero first and gradually rise to a very high value (this is because the capacitor is
being charged by the battery of the multimeter), if it is faulty, then it will stay at zero and the
capacitor is said to have become shorted. If the capacitor has become opened, there will be no
reading on the multimeter. It was a cool test to check a particular capacitor. But in the case of hot
test, the capacitor is charged up to some value less than its rated value through power supply, if
capacitor holds charge for some period of time (when measured with a DMM) after
disconnecting the power supply and discharges slowly then it concludes a good capacitor
otherwise a faulty one. Every capacitor has a voltage rating for which it can be used, if the
capacitor is supplied with a voltage greater than the rating, it will result in it getting damaged.

Note: The hot test requires extra caution, safety rules and a team of at least two peoples working
together.

 Reading value of electrolytic capacitors:

Electrolytic capacitors, as mentioned before have values printed on them. The printed value
includes the capacitance value as well as the voltage rating. The voltage rating is only the
maximum voltage that a capacitor should be exposed to, not the voltage that the capacitor will
charge up to. A capacitor may have a 50-volt rating but it will not charge up to 50 volts unless it
is fed 50 volts from a DC power source. The voltage rating is only the maximum voltage that a
capacitor should be exposed to, not the voltage that the capacitor will charge up to.
  Reading value of Non-electrolytic capacitors:
Unlike electrolytic capacitors, the values of non-electrolytic capacitors have to be decoded. This
takes in to consideration a general rule plus some common sense with regard to the value non
electrolytic capacitors can have i-e <1µF. The general rule is
1st 2nd Multiplier
(1Digit) (2Digit)x10 µF/pF
Determining the unit is where the consideration kicks in, say if a capacitor has the number 102
written on it, and this is how one would decode its value,
2
10x10pF=1000pF=1nF
We took the unit to be pF because if we considered it to be µF, the capacitance would come out
to be 1mF which would be too large a value for non-electrolytic capacitors. As another example,
let’s saythat the number written on the capacitor is .02, now the value of this capacitor would be
decoded as .02µF since .02pF is too small a capacitance value.
Some capacitors also have several suffixes following the coded values, the symbols for the
tolerances and their corresponding values are shown in the table below:

Tolerance Code Tolerance Value

Z(For Large capacitors) +80%,-20%
M ±20%
K ±10%
J ±5%
G ±2%
F ±1%
D ±0.5%
C ±0.25%
B ±0.1%
A ±0.05%
N ±0.02%
Table5.1:Capacitor tolerance codes and values

 Variable capacitors:
The capacitors discussed so far were fixed value capacitors; there are also variable capacitors
that allow us to vary the capacitance. This is achieved in two ways, in one method, there is a set
of fixed (stator) plates and some movable (rotor) plates in between those stator plates, the
movable plates can be brought into and taken out of the mesh by means of a shaft thus varying
the capacitance, in the method one has a mechanism for moving the dielectric thus changing the
capacitance. The capacitance of variable capacitors ranges between 1pF and 500pF. Variable
capacitors of very small value are known as Trimmer capacitors. These are used in radios for
tuning purpose. Symbols are shown in Figure. 5.2.

(a) (b)
Figure5.2.Symbol of Variable (a)Trimmer (b)Capacitors
Some real capacitors are shown in Figure.5.3.

Figure5.3:Some real Capacitors

Procedure:

1. Take a Multimeter that can measure capacitance, set it to measure resistance with the
range set at 2MΩ.
2. Take a few capacitors (polarized and non-polarized).Taking each capacitor one at a time,
use the cool test method described in the theory to check whether the capacitor is faulty
or not and write down your observation in the table.
3. Now set the multimeter to measure capacitance, decode/read the capacitance value and
write it down in Column 3 of the observation table, measure the capacitance with the
multimeter and write down in the observation table as well.

Observations:

List few of the capacitors in Table5.2 and Table 5.3.

S 1 2 3
N.o Polarized/Non-Polarized Value Implication
Faultyornot
faulty
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Table5.2:Checking a capacitor

2.
 S 1 2 3 4 5 6
N.o Polarized/Non- Value Decoded/Read Measured Difference Percent
Polarized Capacitance Value Error
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Table5.3:Tolerance checking of a capacitor

Questions:

1. What happens to the overall capacitance if we connect two capacitors in series or in parallel?

2. Decode the following capacitance values:

i. 103 ii. 560 iii.473

3. Write down some of the applications in which capacitors are used.

Conclusion:
Have you become familiar with capacitors, their types, decoding their values and also
checking of a capacitor? What theoretical and practical concepts did you gain from this
experiment? Comment.