Ceramic Capacitor
A ceramic capacitor uses a ceramic material as the dielectric. Ceramics were one of the first materials to be used in the producion of capacitors, as it was a known insulator. Many geometries were used in ceramic capacitors, of which some, like ceramic tubular capacitors and barrier layer capacitors are obsolete today due to their size, parasitic effects or electrical characteristics. The types of ceramic capacitors most often used in modern electronics are the multi-layer ceramic capacitor, otherwise named ceramic multi-layer chip capacitor (MLCC) and the ceramic disc capacitor. MLCCs are the most produced capacitors with a quantity of approximately 1000 billion devices per year. They are made in SMD (surface-mounted) technology and are widely used due to their small size. Ceramic capacitors are usually made with very small capacitance values, typically between 1nF and 1µF, although values up to 100µF are possible. Ceramic capacitors are also very small in size and have a low maximum rated voltage. They are not polarized, which means that they may be safely connected to an AC source. Ceramic capacitors have a great frequency response due to low parasitic effects such as resistance or inductance.