Today in modern life, humans make use of many objects that have certain devices that they are not even aware of how they work or what their main function is. One of these devices that is used a lot without knowing their existence is what is called a "capacitor." Many people have heard the word capacitor, but also many do not even have an idea of what it means or what is the use for it. In this research, I will concentrate on explaining the physics of a capacitor and describing the main types of capacitors that exist today.
A capacitor is a device used to store charge in an electrical circuit. The function of a capacitor is much similar to a battery, but it charges and discharges much more efficiently. Also, unlike a battery, a capacitor does not produce electrons; it only stores them.
A basic capacitor is made up of two conductors on which equal but opposite electric charges are placed, and an insulator, which is also called a dielectric, separates the two conductors. This dielectric could be made of paper, plastic, mica, ceramic, glass, or almost any other nonconductive material. Because each conductor stores an equal but opposite charge, the total charge in the device is always zero.
The electron storing ability of a capacitor is called "capacitance" (C), and it is measured in Farads. The capacitance (C) is a measure of the amount of charge (Q) stored on each conductor (plate) for a given potential difference or voltage (V). The formula that represents this relation is C = Q/V. In SI units, a capacitor's capacitance is one Farad, which means one coulomb per volt.
Since the Farad is a very large unit, capacitors are usually rated in microfarads (mF=106F), nanofarads (nF=10-9F), and picofarads (pF=10-12F).
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...cs. Last of all, electric double layer capacitors have extreme high capacitances of hundreds or even thousands of farads. These capacitors use a molecule-thin layer of electrolyte as the dielectric, thus having an extremely high energy density.
As time and technology have advanced, better and more efficient capacitors have been built. In present time, different companies are performing studies on trying to use Niobium as a new type of dielectric. If this substance were to be used, it would be possible to create very small capacitors with very large capacities. Definitely, the search for improved capacitors and better technology would not have a definite stop.
Works Cited
Dummer, G. W. A. Fixed Capacitors: Radio and Electronic Components. Vol. 3. 1996.
Van Roon, Tony "What Exactly Is A Capacitor?" 2001
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/gadgets/caps/caps.html
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Ewald Georg von Kleist is a German scientist who created the capacitor in November of 1745. Regrettably, Kleist did not have the proper paper work to claim in the records that the design of the capacitor was his idea. Many months later, a Dutch professor named Pieter van Musschenbroek created the Leyden jar, the world’s first capacitor (on record). It was a simple jar that was half filled with water and metal above it. A metal wire was connected to it and that wire released charges. Benjamin Franklin created his own version of the Leyden jar, the flat capacitor. This was the same experiment for the more part, but it had a flat piece of glass inside of the jar. Michael Faraday was the first scientist to apply this concept to transport electric power over a large distance. Faraday created the unit of measurement for a capacitor, called Farad.
The dielectric constant found decreases monotonically in the lower frequency and it is independent at higher frequency. The high value of the dielectric constant at low frequencies can be attributed to the accumulation of charge carriers near the electrodes and at higher frequency the dipoles or polar molecules are unable to orient themselves in the direction of the applied field, hence the dielectric constant appears to decrease or is steady with increasing frequency [58]. The dielectric constants (εꞌ & εꞌꞌ) were found to increases with temperature at a fixed frequency for all electrolyte films due to the greater freedom of movement of the dipole molecular chains of polymer electrolytes at high temperatures. At lower temperatures, the dipoles are rigidly fixed or tightly bound in the dielectric material; therefore the field cannot change the condition of the dipoles. As the temperature increases, the dipoles become comparatively free and they respond to the applied electric field causes the change in the induced energy at the dipole site and consequently enhance the dipole motion
The top load of a Tesla Coil in the secondary LC tank circuit behaves as a capacitor.
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Benjamin Franklin developed a theory that every object had an "electrical fluid". He believed that some objects had too much of this fluid, while others did not. By putting his theories together, he invented the electrical battery. It was made out...
The solid having high electric (ionic) conductive are called solid electrolyte. In general the conductivity of the electrolyte lies in between 10-6 to 10-1 s/cm range.
19. Novoselov, Kostya S., et al. "Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films." science 306.5696 (2004): 666-669.
Basic Mathematics for Electronics seventh edition: Nelson M. Cooke, Herbert F.R Adams, Peter B. Dell, T. Adair Moore; Copyright 1960
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2) Fundamentals of Physics Extended: Fifth Edition. David Hanley, Robert Resnick, Jearl Walker. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York, Chichester, Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore. 1997.
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