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My capacitor isnt perfect say it isnt so!

8 Bonnie Baker - WEBENCH Design Center Dec 18 2013 18:12 PM
We like to think of capacitors being perfect. That could be a mistake especially when it comes to distortion. Capacitors often
are in the signal path and may add distortion to the circuit all on their own. Figure 1 shows some typical circuits where
capacitors are part of a signal path.
Figure 1. The first stage of a sixth-order bandpass filter (a) and an amplifier driving an R/C pair to an ADC (b).
Figure 1a shows a Sallen-Key, bandpass filter stage. There are two capacitors in this circuit that are exposed to the ac voltages
present in the filter's signal path. Figure 1b shows an amplifier using an R/C network in the drive path of the SAR-ADC input.
The capacitor, C
F
, is encountered by the incoming signal before it reaches the analog-to-digital converter (ADC).
The distortion occurs because of the capacitors voltage and frequency dependant characteristics.
An equation that describes this change in capacitance over a portion of the voltage curve is:
C = C
0
( 1 + bV
CAP
),
where
C
0
is the nominal capacitance,
V
CAP
is the voltage across the capacitance,
b is the voltage coefficient of the capacitor. Often it includes higher order terms that introduce non-linear responses.
Figure 2 shows a typical plotted curve of voltage versus capacitance changes.
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Figure 2. Capacitor voltage coefficient
The input or output charge on a changing capacitor travels through adjacent impedances, creating signal distortion. Since the
charging current from a capacitor is voltage-dependant, it creates a non-linear error. For any signal, this error contains
harmonics.
The capacitor voltage coefficient characteristic can be more pronounced in semiconductor process technologies. Since the ADC
input in Figure 1b has an internal input R/C, this distortion-producing phenomenon is present within the converters input stage.
Fortunately, semiconductor vendors have adjusted the digital output signal for this error. Additionally, the larger voltage
coefficient of the smaller internal ADC capacitor (C
SH
) is dwarfed by the voltage coefficient of the larger external capacitor.
Also, capacitors dielectric properties may introduce an additional distortion that is frequency-dependent. You can see these
effects in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Capacitor THD+N versus frequency
Figure 3 shows the characteristics of several capacitor technologies and their total harmonic distortion plus noise (SINAD)
versus frequency performance. The green line on this chart is taken using a C0G capacitor. The line gold line shows the system
measurement. The other lines on this chart are from ceramic caps with different dielectrics Y5V (red), Z5U (blue), and X7R
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(black). Note that these types of capacitors introduce significant non-linearity and signal distortion over frequency.
Not shown on this chart is the ceramic NPO-type capacitor. The NPO-type capacitor closely matches the C0G performance.
Signal distortion can come in many forms, and the capacitors in the circuit signal path may be the last thing that you think about
as the cause. It is critical that you select the appropriate capacitor type for C
1
and C
2
(Figure 1a) and C
F
(Figure 1b). You will
find that a higher quality external capacitors will not degrade the filter or ADCs performance.
If you have any other stories about unexpected sources of distortion, please send them my way and we can discuss them in
future posts!

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