Ceramic Capacitor Identification

Ceramic disc capacitors like the one on the left are printed with a code.

Ceramic capacitor identification.

The capacitor on the left is of a ceramic disc type capacitor that has the code 473j printed onto its body. The first two digits in this case the 10 give us the first part of the value. For small values the letter r is used to denote a decimal point e g. The value of the capacitor is indicated in picofarads.

Let s examine some typical capacitor markings. Ceramic disc capacitor code label will normally consist of three numbers followed by a letter. The value of the capacitor is denoted in picofarads for ceramic film and tantalum capacitors but for aluminium electrolytic capacitors the value is denoted in microfarads. The above image shows a pair of ceramic disk capacitors labeled only as 10 and 15 these capacitors and all those under 1000pf directly show their capacitance in picofarads.

Therefore the capacitance of these two capacitors are 10 and 15 picofarads respectively. Ceramic disc capacitors have two to three digits code printed on them. However page 70 of this superb vishay ceramic single layer capacitors document suggests you might expect to meet any of eg p68 0 68 pf n15 0 15nf 150 pf. Ceramic capacitors which are usually tiny pancakes with two pins typically list the tolerance value as one letter immediately after the three digit capacitance value.

The third digit is the multiplier which is 1000. The first two significant digits represent the first two digits of the actual value which is 47. They are very easy to decode to find the value. As in the previous case these capacitors also have no.

Markings of ceramic capacitor. This code indicates what the capacitance of the capacitor is. Then the 4 1 st digit the 7 2 nd digit the 3 is the multiplier in pico farads pf and the letter j is the tolerance and this translates to. Mlccs are the most produced capacitors with a quantity of approximately 1000 billion devices per year.

When the first two numbers are multiplied with the multiplier the resulting value is the value of the capacitor in picofarads. 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. Note that the use of xnx here is probably unqiue to capacitors in the nf range i do not recall seeing eg xpx or xux markings ever. The example capacitor has a 3 digit number printed on it 103.

This letter represents the tolerance of the capacitor meaning how close the actual value of the capacitor can be expected to be to the indicated value of the capacitor. The first two numbers describe the value of the capacitor and the third number is the number of zeros in the multiplier. The markings on a ceramic capacitor are more concise in nature since it is smaller in size as compared to electrolytic capacitors.