Today, most converter circuits now include semiconductors and switches made of silicon carbide (SiC) instead of plain old silicon (Si). This is because when silicon and carbon are combined, the resulting material, SiC, has excellent mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties. Therefore, SiC-based converters can handle voltages up to 10 times greater than converters using just Si while also offering lower losses. These characteristics make these converters an excellent option for applications such as power electronics, industrial devices, and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. In this post, we dive into the advantages of using snubber circuits to protect SiC-based converters and discuss how to further increase these efficiencies by focusing on capacitor selection.

Healthcare professionals and patients rely on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology to examine soft tissues and organs in the body to detect a variety of issues, from degenerative diseases to tumors, in a non-invasive manner. To do this, the MRI machine uses a strong magnetic field and computer-generated radio waves to produce cross-sectional images. Thus, the quality of the MRI depends on the uniformity of the magnetic field – even the smallest trace of magnetism inside an MRI scanner can disrupt the field and degrade the quality of an MRI image. 

Today, many electrical systems are demanding higher operating voltages and temperatures, along with higher capacitance values – particularly in the fast-growing area of power electronics for electric vehicles (EVs). Therefore, electrical design engineers are looking to use multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) in these applications due to their inherent low inductance and wide operating temperature range.

To help customers with filter selection, we generally provide a lot of information on what our filters can do. But in this new Filter Basics Series, we are taking a step back to cover some background information on how filters do what they do. Regardless of the technology behind the filter, there are several key concepts that all filters share that we will dive into throughout this series. By providing this detailed fundamental filter information, we hope to help you simplify your future filtering decisions.

In part 4 of this series, we provide overviews of the main filter types and key filter technologies available today.

RF circuits for applications in the mmWave range (30 to 300 GHz) require high-performance filtering to meet the high-data, high-speed functionality that operating at these higher frequencies promises. However, filters for devices operating in the mmWave range will not function optimally if your printed circuit board (PCB) is not configured appropriately. For this reason, RF design engineers need to make a number of critical PCB design decisions that range from selecting the right materials to developing a board configuration that will limit common issues such as spurious-wave-mode propagation, conductor and radiation losses, unwanted resonance, and dispersion.

Spectral efficiency, or bandwidth efficiency, tells us about the channel capacity over a 1Hz bandwidth. It is a measure of the efficiency of a physical layer protocol when it comes to utilizing the spectrum available. To understand how spectral efficiency is calculated, it’s first important to understand the Shannon-Hartley Theorem in the context of 5G mmWave applications (which we discussed in an earlier blog post).

If you’re a long-time reader of our blog, you know that we typically dedicate our blog content to sharing our engineering team’s in-depth expertise and insights on the trends and technologies impacting the industries and applications we serve. We tend to be so focused on the exciting things we are working on to drive innovation in capacitor and RF filtering applications that we don’t share much about how we got to where we are now. But, as you can imagine, getting to the point we are at now with our world-class engineering and manufacturing teams, did not happen by accident.

To help customers with filter selection, we generally provide a lot of information on what our filters can do. But in this new Filter Basics Series, we are taking a step back to cover some background information on how filters do what they do. Regardless of the technology behind the filter, there are several key concepts that all filters share that we will dive into throughout this series. By providing this detailed fundamental filter information, we hope to help you simplify your future filtering decisions. 

In part 3 of this series, we aim to help simplify filter selection by providing an overview and reference point for five of the most commonly discussed filter technology specifications.

Impedance, measured in ohms, extends the concept of “opposition” to alternating current (AC) applications. It accounts for resistance, the opposition of current flow, and reactance, the measure of opposing alternating current – an effect of inductance and/or capacitance. In direct current (DC) applications, we talk in terms of resistance, not reactance. Chances are: This isn’t new information. But there’s a reason we wanted to cover this topic – impedance values play an important role in capacitor selection.

Space missions present a unique set of environmental challenges that demand high reliability down to the smallest electronic components. Mission failures could cost human lives. From in-flight systems to power supplies, every single system contributes to the success of a space project, so they must maintain high quality and safety standards for long durations.