history

barry brusso

The Evolution of Capacitors

Satish Chaparala, Guest Author

IEEE In dustry A p plication s M ag az in e n ov |dec 2014 www.ieee.or g/ia s

capacitor is a simple
device. It is basically
just two conductors
sandwiched with an
insulator between them.
Engineers know the basic laws of
physics: capacitance (the amount of
charge) increases directly with the area
of the conductors (plates), inversely
with their distance apart, and directly
with the dielectric constant of the
insulation. Given a moment to think,
engineers remember that the dielectric
constant of air is one and that of pure
water is 81. How did they find this
out? The fascinating story goes back
over two centuries.
The first capacitor in history was
built in October 1745 by Ewald
Georg von Kleist of Pomerania in
Germany. Around the same time, it is
claimed that a Dutch physicist, Pieter
van Musschenbroek from the University of Leiden, independently constructed a capacitor (Figure 1). The
latter formed his capacitor in a glass
container, which he called a Leyden
jar after the university with which he
was affiliated. It consisted of a glass
jar with a narrow neck partially filled
with water and wrapped outside and
inside with a thin metal foil. The
outer foil was connected to the
ground, and the inside foil was connected by a lead through a cork in the
neck of the jar to a source of electricity like a high-voltage electrostatic
generator. Von Kleist, after charging
the jar and disconnecting the electrostatic generator, got a shock by touchDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIAS.2014.2342592
Date of publication: 8 October 2014

ing the lead to the water and holding

the jar. Although how it works was
not understood at the time, experimenters discovered that the Leyden
jar seemed to store an electric charge
even after it was disconnected from
the generator.
Like many early electrical devices,
there was no particular use for the
Leyden jar at first, other than to
allow scientists to do a greater variety
of electrical experiments. Benjamin
Franklin, the American inventor and
statesman, showed that water in the
jar was not essential. He created flat
capacitors, or Franklin squares,

with a sheet of glass between foil

electrodes. He did an experiment
with a Leyden jar and showed that
the charge could be initiated from
lightning and stored. In 1775, Alessandro Volta published a short letter
announcing the discovery of what he
called the perpetual electrophorus. It
worked on the novel principle of
electrostatic induction (essentially a
capacitor) or influence rather than
by direct electrostatic frictional
means. Details of his work can be
found at www.alessandrovolta.info.
It was later found that, instead of
glass, nonconducting materials such

1
An artist's depiction of an assistant in the lab of Pieter van Muschenbroek
attempting to condense electricity in a glass jar. On the right is an electrostatic
machine. Later, foil coatings were put on the inside and outside of the jar. (Image
courtesy of Wikimedia.)
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Pioneers in the Manufacturing of Capacitors

IEEE In dustry A p plication s M ag az in e n ov |dec 2014 www.ieee.or g/ia s

here are a few pioneers in the manufacturing of capacitors like Digambar Madhav Tagare (Figure S1), who, in 1950, founded and became the
managing director of Madhav Capacitors Pvt. Ltd. in Pune, Maharashtra,
India, and the late Myron Zucker (Figure S2) of Myron Zucker Inc. in the United States. They were both associated with the IEEE Industry Applications
Society. Another pioneer in capacitor manufacturing was Robert C.
Sprague. By the mid-1930s, capacitors sold under the brand name Sprague
became the standard for use in radios. Tantalum capacitors, which are a
fraction of the size of other capacitors, were invented by his company.
Tagare, who served his apprenticeship with RCA in Camden, New Jersey, returned to Mumbai, India, and was responsible for bringing capacitor manufacturing to his native country. He was awarded with the title
Father of Capacitor Industries in India by the Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers Association in 2002. He is 90 years old at the time of
writing and in 2011 published the book Electricity Power Gen: The Changing Dimensions, an IEEE Press book on power engineering. In 2005, he
published another book, Electrical Power Capacitors: Design and Manufacturing, a Tata McGraw-Hill publication.
Zucker, who spent his early career in the 1940s working for Sprague
Power Factor Correction Capacitor Company, left and founded his own
company in 1950, The Zucker Engineering Co, known today as Myron Zucker, Inc. in Michigan. He was affectionately nicknamed Mr. Capacitor-USA.
In 1990, the IEEE Industry Applications Society established The Myron Zucker
Student Design Contest in his name, supported by a generous endowment.
Tagare, recalling the history of capacitors, reminisces [2] that in the
1950s, testing methods were primitive. One applied an almost breakdown
voltage to a capacitor; if it survived, it passed, or else it failed.

10

S1
Digambar Madhav
Tagare.

S2
Myron Zucker.

as wax, oil, paper, plastic, and ceramic

could also be used to make a capacitor. Before 1950, capacitors were
called condensers. The unit of capacitance was the jar until 1872, and it
was later changed to the Farad in
memory of Michael Faraday. Faradays
experimental work led him to invent
a method to measure capacitance.
Early Technology

Once the basic concepts were generally understood, questions about choices of materials and configurations
came into the forefront, the familiar
application issues. In 1876, D.G.
Fitzgerald, looking for improvements
in electrical condensers or accumula-

tors, invented a capacitor using a

wax-impregnated paper dielectric
between foil electrodes. Such capacitors were used in power supply filtering in radio receivers. In 1909,
William Dubilier invented mica
dielectric capacitors. Mica capacitors
were very reliable because mica is a
very good dielectric.
In 1897, Charles Pollak was given
a patent for an electrolytic capacitor.
This type of capacitor had a short
life, and in 1936, aluminum electrolytic capacitors were introduced.
Still, electrolytic capacitors were not
highly reliable until World War II,
when the causes for early failure were
found and removed.

Ceramics have been used as dielectrics in capacitors. The Leyden jar was a
ceramic capacitor. Mica, porcelain, steatite, and titanium dioxide were used
as dielectric materials in capacitors. A
breakthrough occurred in the 1940s,
when barium titanate was put in capacitors as a dielectric. Its dielectric value
is nearly ten times higher than the
other dielectrics in use at that time.
The next milestone in capacitor
technology occurred about 40 years
ago, when barium titanate multilayer
dielectric capacitors were made.
Detailed information is available in
[1]. By 1930, the demand increased
by leaps and bounds with the rapid
spread of radio broadcasting.
Power Capacitors

The demand for power capacitors

increased due to the tremendous
growth in the power sector and
expanded industrial use of electricity.
Several dielectrics were developed
and tried in the last 60 years. These
include metallized paper, metallized
polymer film, polyethylene terephthalate, polychlorinated biphenyl
(PCB), and polypropylene [2].
The early constituents of power
capacitors were condenser tissue paper,
aluminum foil, and a special highly
aromatic grade of transformer oil,
along with bolted porcelain insulators.
Condenser tissue paper for capacitors
started with an average thickness of
14 nm, with a useable stress of 1214
V/nm. It underwent a good deal of
improvement over the period 1965
1970, as it was the sole solid dielectric
in use then. Pulp was repeatedly
washed in deionized water and pounded to get long, thin paper. The paper
thickness came down to 10 nm. Even
smaller thicknesses were produced;
however, these did not stand trials and
service. Voltage stresses improved to
18 V/nm. The cost of the paper was
the largest portion of capacitor costs.
It may be noted that the size and contents of a basic capacitor unit vary
inversely with the voltage stress on a
solid dielectric.
PCBs Enter the Scene

By 1965, there was a breakthrough:

the dielectric fluid PCB. It was a
dream material for high-voltage
capacitor manufacturers. The breakdown voltages went up from a

almost overnight, burned their combination of polyvinyl chloride as a

remaining stock in open nonhazardous jacket and polypropylene as an insulatspaces, and advised
ing medium. They
their customers to do
had to struggle to get
Power
the same. From then
polypropylene into caon, every capacitor
pacitors. Polypropylcapacitors
manufacturer has had
ene, like all the plastic
to declare on each unit
is basically a
traditionally polymers,
that it contained no
cooled-down glass maPCBs. Capacitor manterial. In the late
have been
ufacturers had no
1970s, General Elecalternative except to
tric in the United
used to
turn back to the old
States filed a patent for
improve the
aromatic grade of
the use of polypropyltransformer oil. The
ene in combination
load power
demand for paper,
with capacitor paper,
which had shrunk on
which gave it a cushfactor.
account of PCBs, went
ioning. Thus, mixed
up overnight.
dielectric capacitors
There is a short substory to the this were born. These mixed dielectric cahistory as described in Pioneers in the pacitors were of better quality, and the
Manufacturing of Capacitors. Scien- voltage stresses went up from 28 to
tists were playing around with poly- 4045 V/nm. The size per kilovar of
mer films as a substitute for paper the basic capacitor unit went down.
insulation on almost all types of elec- Paper was later replaced totally by
trical machinery, including capacitors. polypropylene, and all-propylene caThey succeeded on power cables with a pacitors thus came into being.

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45-V/2.5-mm gap on transformer oil

to an over 60-V/2.5-mm gap for
PCBs. With PCBs on the scene, the
capacitor working voltages went up
from 14 to 2530 V/n m, and the
need for paper was greatly reduced
since the size of the capacitor unit
was smaller. The basic high-voltage
capacitor unit size, which had stagnated at 25 kvar over a long period,
went up in steps to 200 kvar and
even higher. Because of their excellent stability and thermal properties,
PCBs have been used as a heat-transfer fluid in several industries.
In Japan in 1968, a food product
was contaminated with PCBs from a
heat-exchange operation, and more
than 1,200 people were afflicted,
some rather severely, with what was
called Yusho disease. This outbreak,
plus other incidents and a rapidly
expanding research effort identifying
PCBs as highly toxic and dangerous,
led the sole U.S. producer (Monsanto
Industrial Chemicals Company) to
voluntarily restrict sales to closed
electrical systems. Such steps
removed about half the PCBs
from the market and began the
elimination of the most common uses whereby PCBs were
being introduced to the environment, such as through carbonless office paper.
PCBs were unbreakable, electrically as well as environmentally. That was its curse. It
entered the digestive systems of
all living beings. It was not disassociated and stayed proof. But
it tinkered with the genes of a
person to the extent that progeny were born deformed. In an
extreme case, where PCB oil was
used inadvertently as cooking
oil, Japanese babies were born
without shoulders and arms but
with fishlike flaps. The PCBs
entered plant systems and stayed
put. That was an alarming danger to our living planet.
The warnings were heeded by
the world community of scientists, and they decided that there
should be no PCBs on our planet
in any form. Giant chemical
industries like Monsanto in the
United States, Bayer in Germany,
and Nippon in Japan closed their
PCB manufacturing plants

11

IEEE In dustry A p plication s M ag az in e n ov |dec 2014 www.ieee.or g/ia s

Post PCB Scenario

12

compensation and voltage regulation.

With the ban on PCBs, there were A relatively new application of capacifrantic efforts to develop an organic tors is in dealing with power-quality
liquid to replace it. Today, two dielec- problems due to harmonic distortion.
tric fluids for capacitor impregnation Until 1960, the main harmonics in
have captured this market: phenylxy- industry were from arc furnaces and
lyl ethane, made by Mitsubishi in some rectifier loads. But in the 1970s,
Japan, and Jarylec C101D, made by new harmonic problems (distortion of
Arkema in France.
sine wave) arose with
With further develthe introduction of
The first
opments in polyprostatic power supplies
pylene, the capacitor
and variable- speed
capacitor in drives in industry.
working stress reached
levels of 7580 V/nm
Capacitors found a
history was
of polypropylene (vermajor new application
sus the starting stresses
in harmonic filters for
built in
of 14 V/nm on paper
these loads. The proper
in transformer oil).
October 1745 application of capaciThe improvement in
tors requires avoiding
the solid dielectric
resonance and harmonby Ewald
strength has created
ic amplification and
Georg von
another sort of history.
capacitor switching
The original hightransient problems [3].
Kleist of
voltage capacitor units
The latest applicahad a protective fuse in
tion
of capacitors is in
Pomerania in the field
each inside element.
of large enerThis built up configy
storage.
For these
Germany.
dence in the dielectric,
applications, a differand then fuses moved
ent type of capacitor
from inside elements to the outside of called a super- or ultracapacitor is
individual units. Today, they are al- being developed. The role of supercamost extinct.
pacitors is to substitute for batteries,
The next change was in unit flywheels, and other storage devices in
sizes, which went up to 900 kvar in some functions. Supercapacitors store
a single container for medium-volt- charge electrostatically on high-surage systems of 6.6 kV and above. face-area electrodes and charge and
However, the unavoidable periodic discharge in seconds. They are mostly
replacements of capacitors made the used to provide short bursts of power
large size economically nonviable, in buses and cranes, and they hold
and the unit sizes returned to a max- promise for electric vehicles. The oriimum of 300350 kvar. From 1980 gins of this technology go back nearly
until today, the input materials and 60 years to General Electric and Stantechnology in power capacitors have dard Oil of Ohio [4].
remained unchanged. There have
been neither any challenges nor History of Power
Capacitors in India
any innovations.
The capacitor industry in India has
Applications
come a long way in the past 60 years,
Power capacitors traditionally have and today, it is self-sufficient in terms
been used to improve the load power of capacity as well as capability. The
factor. They are used to provide reactive Indian industry represents a healthy
power compensation in transmission composition of local and multinaand distribution systems. In power sys- tional manufacturers catering to dotems, series capacitors are used for line mestic demand as well as serving

global markets. The country has seen

a gradual increase in unit rating from
100200 to 300600 kvar, which are
very common, to single units of 800
1,200 kvar for some applications.
Not only has the unit power rating
been gradually increasing, so has the
unit voltage rating, and single units
for 33 kv are not uncommon. The
operating stress levels have also gradually increased. Supported by the development of new high-performance
materials, design, and process technology, operating stress levels have
grown from average levels of
5055 V/ n m a couple of decades
back to 7089 V/nm now.
While medium-voltage capacitors
are manufactured with nonself-healing technology (e.g., film plus foil or
all-plastic film), self-healing technology capacitors using metalized polypropylene capacitors are more popular
for applications in low-voltage power,
dc power, and power electronics. Lowvoltage power capacitors have evolved
from all-paper dielectric to mixed
dielectric to all-film dielectric to metalized film dielectric, which now represents more than 95% of low-voltage
power capacitors. As per the Indian
Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers Association, the annual production of power capacitors in India last
year was 61,550 Mvar.
Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank E.

Hesla, D.M. Tagare, and R. Venkatesh
for their input, suggestions, and
encouragement in writing this article.
References

[1] J. Ho, S. Boggs Jr, and T. R. Jow, Historical introduction to capacitor technology,
IEEE Electr. Insul. Mag., vol. 26, pp. 2025,
Jan./Feb. 2010.
[2] D. M. Tagare, Electrical Power Capacitors.
New York: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2005.
[3] R. Natarajan, Power System Capacitors. Boca
Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2005.
[4] J. Miller, Introduction to electrochemical
capacitor technology, IEEE Electr. Insul.
Mag., vol. 26, pp. 4047, July/Aug. 2010.


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