Ever wondered why 100nF is a go-to value for decoupling capacitors? This number has pervaded in datasheets and electronics advice going back to the 1980s, and is still widely present in the datasheets of modern components. Folks are out there sprinkling 100nF capacitors on their boards like seasoning, and when they decide 100nF isn’t enough, they inevitably recommend the big/little practice, e.g. 1uF + 100nF in parallel.
Unfortunately, 100nF kinda sucks, and this common decoupling practice is incredibly...
I’ve been reading about capacitors a lot lately. Not just their high-level circuit behaviours, but also their materials and physical properties. I put together a heap of notes on the topic. Knowing me, these notes will languish in my documents folder and I’ll never look at them again. And that’s ok, because that’s just how my brain works, but it occurs to me that someone else might find these notes useful.
As such, I’ve transformed them into something more readable, and that’s what this blog post is. I’ve...