As electrolytic capacitors, tantalum capacitors are better than aluminum capacitors?

Tantalum capacitors actually belong to the category of electrolytic capacitors:

Tantalum electrolytic capacitors are very small in size and are mounted in laminated form. The shell of tantalum electrolytic capacitors is generally encapsulated in resin, but its capacity is not small. The capacity and voltage of many types of tantalum electrolytic capacitors can be close to that of traditional vertical aluminum electrolytic capacitors. However, it should be noted that the anode of tantalum capacitor is tantalum, and the cathode is also electrolyte, so tantalum capacitor also belongs to the "electrolytic capacitor" that many people despise. The key is that the classification of electrolytic capacitor is too large.

The dielectric of tantalum capacitor is tantalum pentoxide produced after anodic oxidation. Its dielectric capacity is higher than that of alumina capacitor. Therefore, tantalum capacitors can be made smaller than aluminum capacitors in the same capacity. In addition, tantalum has a relatively stable property, so tantalum capacitors are generally considered to have better performance than aluminum capacitors.

Tantalum polymer capacitors have better electrical properties than aluminum polymer capacitors:

Generally, the performance of capacitors is measured. We all know the parameters of large capacity, high voltage resistance and low ESR (equivalent series resistance). In fact, in addition to these parameters, there are some little-known key parameters that have a great impact on the stability of capacitors.

Low leakage current: cathode is same polymer (PEDTPPY, etc.) of polymer tantalum capacitor leakage current only a fraction of the polymer aluminum capacitor, with famous sanyo OSCON SVP product as an example, its 4 v 33 uf 4 svp33m leakage current (LC) with specifications for the 66 ua tantalum polymer capacitors are generally only about 12 ua, this represents the graphics card if using polymer tantalum capacitor filter would be cleaner, caused by leakage current pulse will be small.

Small loss Angle: take 4SVP33M as an example, the loss Angle is 0.15, and the DF (loss Angle) of the same specification tantalum polymer capacitor is 0.08. There is a difference of orders of magnitude of 0.10 and 0.12 between 0.15 and 0.08. Small loss Angle indicates that the heating of the capacitor will be much smaller, which is conducive to improving the life of the capacitor and increasing the stability of the graphics card.

Low failure rate: the failure rate is that the capacitor may fail once every certain working time. Note that the capacitor may fail once instead of needing to be repaired or broken directly. Tantalum polymer capacitors are due to the resin encapsulation, plus a multi-layer silver and graphite cathode plating and tantalum wire so failure rate is far less than easy to enter the moisture and corrosion of aluminum polymer capacitor, in a test the AVX and KEMET tantalum polymer capacitors in a simulation run of 1000000 hours to appear in a failure, that is to say, you want to run into a polymer tantalum capacitor failure have to wait for more than 110 years, so Sam's key electronic equipment is used it is reasonable.

The ESR is extremely low and does not explode, making it arguably the best performing electrolytic capacitor on a graphics card.

Tantalum capacitors have better physical properties than aluminum capacitors:

In addition to its excellent electrical properties and stability, tantalum capacitors are more widely applicable than aluminum capacitors due to their excellent physical properties (small size and relatively large capacity), which are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

High integration of high-end graphics card /CPU power supply module may not be able to install more vertical aluminum capacitors;

Vertical aluminum capacitance cannot be installed on the back of PCB of motherboard/graphics card;

When the graphics card /CPU needs to be fitted with a heavy radiator, the vertical aluminum capacity of the chimney type obviously does not work.

For this reason, in recent years, many high-end graphics CARDS and high-end motherboards have begun to use tantalum capacitors as the filter capacitors of power supply modules (mostly a combination of tantalum capacitors and aluminum capacitors), but the non-public version is not easy to use for a variety of reasons (design, cost, procurement, etc.).