Polymer chip capacitors meet challenging 125°C lifetime stability test

“The AEC-Q200 lifetime stability and humidity bias tests are notoriously difficult for polymer capacitors to pass due to inherent material limitations. As such, we based our new TCQ Series automotive conductive polymer chip capacitors on our proven, high reliability TCR Series professional conductive polymer chip capacitors, making several critical improvements to the material, design, and manufacturing processes in order to deliver the enhanced endurance and high stability, harsh environment performance required to achieve AEC-Q200 qualification,” said Gordon Hoey, global automotive product marketing manager, AVX.

TCQ Series automotive conductive polymer chip capacitors feature conductive polymer electrodes, which enable a benign failure mode under recommended use conditions, and exhibit basic reliability of 1% per 1,000 hours at 85°C and rated voltage with 60% confidence. The series also delivers low DC leakage (0.1CV), high capacitance and stable electrical performance at operating temperatures as high as 125°C in small, low profile case sizes, which makes them suitable solutions for a wide variety of space-constrained, harsh environment automotive, industrial, telecommunications and DC/DC converter applications.

Lead-free compatible and RoHS compliant, the new TCQ Series automotive conductive polymer chip capacitors are currently available in three case sizes: 1210 (EIA Metric 3528-21), 2917 (EIA Metric 7343-31) and 2917 (EIA Metric 7343-20). The full voltage range for the series spans 4 to 35V, and capacitance values span 4.7 to 220μF with a ±20% capacitance tolerance.

TCQ Series capacitors are also three times reflow compatible at 260°C and are rated for operating temperatures ranging from -55 to +125°C,. Manufactured at an ISO/TS 16949 certified plant in accordance with the Automotive Electronics Council’s AEC-Q200 specification for passive components, TCQ Series capacitors are supplied with 100% tin terminations on 7 or 13” reels, and lead time for the series is 10–12 weeks.