What is a Capacitor, How to Make a Capacitor and Its Working

Capacitors

Ewald Georg von Kleist of Pomerania created in 1745 that charge can be stored by linking a high electrostatic generator with the help of wire to a volume of water in a hand held glass jar. The water is observed as a conductor and the jar acts as a dielectric plate. Von Kleist has observed that by touching the two wires the result is in the form of power full sparks and more pain full occurs from the electro-static machine. The similar projects were founded in the following years by Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek and he named as a Leyden jar. Daniel Gralath is the first person who combined several jars in parallel into a battery to increase the charge storage capacity. Leyden jar has investigated by the Benjamin Frankin and he came to know that the charge was stored in the glass but not in the water. Later on the Leyden jar was made by coating inside and outside of the jar with the help of metal foil and leaving a space in the mouth protect arcing between the foil. In earlier days the units of capacitance is jar and equipment is about 1.11 nano farads. This article gives an overview of what is a capacitor, how to make a capacitor construction, working, advantages and disadvantages.

How to Make a Capacitor and Its Working

The working and making of a capacitor are discussed below.

What is a Capacitor?

The Capacitor is a two terminal passive electrical component, used to store the electrical energy temporarily in the electrical field. The practical capacitors are very widely, but most of them have two electrical conductor plates. Which are separated by dielectric it is an insulator can store energy by polarized. The conductors are in the form of thin film, foils and conductivity electrolyte. In most of the circuits the capacitors are used in the electrical circuits. The following basic symbol shows the basic capacitor.

Capacitor

Different Names of the Capacitors

The following are the different types of capacitors

• Paper Capacitor
• Air Capacitor
• Plastic Capacitor
• Silvered mica Capacitor.

Construction of a Capacitor

The capacitor consist of two or more than parallel conductive plates and they are not connected or touching each other but, it is electrically separated by the air or by in the form of good insulating materials like wax paper, mica, ceramic, plastic, and some liquid gels which are used in electrolytic capacitors. The insulating layer between the capacitor plates is known as a Dielectric. But due to the insulating layer DC current can’t flow through the capacitor and it blocks, allowing instead of voltage should be present across the plates are in the form of electric charge.

Construction of a Capacitor

The conductive metal plates are in the form of a square, circular, or rectangular and also in the shapes of cylindrical or spherical with general shapes and size. The construction of capacitors with parallel plates is depending on the applications and voltage ratings. When the direct current circuit is used a capacitor charges up to a supply voltage, but it blocks the flow of current because the dielectric capacitor is a non-conductive and it is an insulator. Whenever a capacitor is connected to an AC circuit the flow of current is in the direction of straight path through the capacitor.

The electrical charges are two types one is positive charge and the other one is a negative charge. The positive charge contains protons and the negative charge contains electrons. If the DC voltage is applied to the capacitor the positive charges will be once side of the plate and the negative charges will be the other side of the plate. Then the plates will be charged and the potential difference between these two plates will be occurred.

If the capacitor is at steady state condition then the electrical current is not possible to flow through the capacitor and due to the insulating properties of a dielectric which is around the circuit is to separate the plates. The flow of electrons in the plates is called as the capacitors charging current and continues the flow of electrons until the voltage across the both plates of the capacitor and it is equal to the applied voltage Vc. This point of capacitor is called as fully charged with the electrons.

The rate of the charging current has maximum value when the plates are fully discharged and the value is slowly reduced to zero. As the plate charge to a potential difference across the capacitor plates is equal to the source voltage. Some amount of potential difference is present on the capacitor and depends on how much amount of charge was there on the plates and the work is done by the source voltage.

How to Make a Capacitor

The capacitor is made up of two metal plates and also with the insulating material which is known as dielectric plate. The metal plates are placed in parallel directions which are close to each other. The dielectric plate is used because the two parallel plates should not touch each other. The dielectric is prepared with the insulating material of paper, glass, rubber, and ceramic. The plates are made up of the conductive materials like aluminum, silver, and other metals.

How to Make a Capacitor

Based on the construction of the capacitance of the capacitor the farads can be defined. If the gap between the two plates is more then, it has the less capacitance. If the gap between the two plates is less then, it has the more capacitance. The dielectric material has the effect of how many farads should have the capacitor. The total calculation of the capacitance of the capacitor is calculated by the equation below.

C = εr A/4Πd

εr- is the dielectric relative Permitivity

A- is the amount of area the plates overlap with each other

D-is the distance between the two plates

How Does a Capacitor Work?

The electric current is the flow of electric charge and what electrical components connect to the light up or spin or whatever they want to do. Whenever the current flows in the capacitor the charge will struck on the plates because the plates should not touch the insulating dielectric plates. All the electrons of negatively charged particles are charged to one plate and the plate will become the overall negative charge. The huge mass of negative charge on the plate pushes away to the other plates and the plate will become an overall positive charge.

Capacitor Working

The two plates of positive and negative charges will collapse each other because of what opposite charge do. However, with the dielectric sitting between them is as much as they want to come together, the charges will ever more stuck to the plates. With the help of the electric filed the stationary charges of these plates are created and which influence the electric potential energy and voltage. If the charges are grouped together on the capacitor hence the capacitor is a strong electric energy.

How to Charge and Discharge the Capacitor

If the positive and negative charges are combined on the capacitor plates, then the capacitors will become charged. The capacitor can keep its electric field and hold the charge because of the positive and negative charges on each of the particular plate attract each other. If the capacitor is fully charged, then they cannot accept any more of the charge. If there is a enough negative charge on the plates that they can prevent other that try to join.

This is where the farad of a capacitor come to know and gives the information about the maximum amount of charge that the capacitor can store. If there is a path in the circuit is created it allows the charging to find other plates to each other and leave the capacitor and it discharges.

The following circuit diagram shows that the battery is used for inducing an electrical potential across the capacitor. This source is equal, but there is an opposite charge to build each of the plates. An LED is placed in series with the capacitor and it will provide a path for current hence the energy stored in the capacitor can be used.

Advantages of Capacitor

• Low Cost per cycle
• It has good reversibility
• The capacitor has high output power
• The super capacitors can charge in rapid
• The capacitor ha high rate of charge and discharge
• It has very low internal resistance and consequent high cycle efficiency

Disadvantages of Capacitor

• The dielectric plate has the highest absorption of any type of capacitor
• The capacitor has a high self discharge
• Linear discharge voltage prevents the use of fully energy spectrum

Uses of Capacitor

• The capacitor can use in filtering audio tunes
• Tuning radio system
• The capacitor has the storing electricity
• To power supply smoothing out an electrical current

Thus, this is all about what is a capacitor, how to make a capacitor and working. I hope the given information in the article has given some basic knowledge of how to make a capacitor and different types of capacitors. If you have any query regarding this article or about the any type of semiconductors, to implement ECE and EEE engineering projects please comment in the below section. Here is a question for you, what are the different types of capacitors?

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• What is a Capacitor clipartbest
  How to Make a Capacitor sparkfun
• How Does a Capacitor Work analyseameter