Tantalum has been a favored capacitor technology in space-limited designs for a long time. Recent years have seen the emergence of one or two equivalent technologies offering many of the advantages of tantalum, such as volumetric efficiency and reliability. Two notable rivals already well into their commercialization phase are niobium oxide capacitors and tantalum capacitors with conductive polymer cathodes. A circuit designer trying to choose between these solid electrolyte capacitor systems has a number of trade-offs and subtleties of operation to consider. The paper will review the latest electronic application needs and discuss feasibility of the latest technology trends on tantalum, niobium oxide and polymer capacitors.
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