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The ESR represents losses in the capacitor. In a low-loss capacitor the ESR is very small (the conduction is high leading to a low resistivity), and in a lossy capacitor the ESR can be large. Note that the ESR is not simply the resistance that would be measured across a capacitor by an ohmmeter. The ESR is a derived quantity representing the ...
Capacitors and inductors as used in electric circuits are not ideal components with only capacitance or inductance.However, they can be treated, to a very good degree of approximation, as being ideal capacitors and inductors in series with a resistance; this resistance is defined as the equivalent series resistance (ESR) [1].
The loss tangent is defined by the angle between the capacitor's impedance vector and the negative reactive axis. If the capacitor is used in an AC circuit, the dissipation factor due to the non-ideal capacitor is expressed as the ratio of the resistive power loss in the ESR to the reactive power oscillating in the capacitor, or
Measuring ESR can be done by applying an alternating voltage at a frequency at which the capacitor's reactance is negligible, in a voltage divider configuration. It is easy to check ESR well enough for troubleshooting by using an improvised ESR meter comprising a simple square-wave generator and oscilloscope, or a sinewave generator of a few tens of kilohertz and an AC voltmeter, using a known ...
When the current is a linear function of the voltage, the device is said to have ohmic contacts. Inductive and capacitive methods could be used in principle to measure an intrinsic impedance without the complication of contact resistance. In practice, direct current methods are more typically used to determine resistance.
Some types of capacitors, primarily tantalum and aluminum electrolytic capacitors, as well as some film capacitors have a specified rating value for maximum ripple current. Tantalum electrolytic capacitors with solid manganese dioxide electrolyte are limited by ripple current and generally have the highest ESR ratings in the capacitor family.
A multimeter in a resistance range can detect a short-circuited capacitor (very low resistance) or one with very high leakage (high resistance, but lower than it should be; an ideal capacitor has infinite DC resistance). A crude idea of the capacitance can be derived with an analog multimeter in a high resistance range by observing the needle ...
The Q factor is a parameter that describes the resonance behavior of an underdamped harmonic oscillator (resonator). Sinusoidally driven resonators having higher Q factors resonate with greater amplitudes (at the resonant frequency) but have a smaller range of frequencies around that frequency for which they resonate; the range of frequencies for which the oscillator resonates is called the ...