TDK Epcos CeraLink capacitor for fast-switching semiconductors

Product Description

Fast-switching systems require circuit designs with minimised ESR and ESL values. Accordingly, the passive components – inductors, but especially capacitors – must also keep pace with the high switching frequencies. These in turn permit more compact and lightweight passive components to be used, producing lower losses and increasing efficiency.

Capacitors in these applications must therefore combine high switching frequencies with low ESL and ESR values as well as an extremely compact design. Conventional capacitor technologies are only partially able to meet these requirements. CeraLink, however, is a ceramic multilayer ripple-current suppressor, also known as a link circuit or DC link capacitor. It also functions as a snubber.

CeraLink, featuring a patented multilayer component that is based on antiferroelectric ceramic material with special copper internal electrodes, offers the advantages of ceramic capacitors without their unfavourable characteristics. It allows both standard IGBTs and the new high-speed types with significantly higher switching frequencies to be used even more economically. This also applies to circuits with corresponding superjunction MOSFETs.

These capacitors are also available in a low-profile SMD design, making them suitable as a snubber solution for integration in power modules. The CeraLink components were adapted and continuously optimised for the first designs of special IGBT modules in close cooperation with Infineon Technologies, the market leader in IGBTs, allowing the best results to be achieved in terms of performance and energy efficiency.