ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the fundamentals of capacitors and emphasizes the critical parameters of dielectric materials and the construction of capacitors, as well as their operations in a variety of applications. An electric capacitor has a sandwich structure containing two conductive plates surrounding a dielectric or insulator. The roles of a capacitor are to separate, store, and deliver electric charges and the concepts and properties of charges must be understood. The dielectric constant is an important parameter for a capacitor. The physical meaning of the dielectric constant can be described as how effectively the dielectric allows a capacitor to store more charge. Every material used in a capacitor has its own dielectric constant, depending on the dielectric material. Depending on the dielectric materials and applications, various types of capacitors have been designed, fabricated, and commercialized. These capacitors are categorized as fixed, variable, power, high voltage, interference suppression, ferrodielectric, polar polymer dielectric, linear, and nonlinear capacitors.
