New surface mount safety certified ceramic capacitor

     KEMET has now launched a new range of Surface Mount (SMD) safety-certified multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCS) for mains power applications. Compared to the lead disc capacitors, which represent the majority of safety-certified ceramic capacitors seen on the market today, the CAS series offers higher capacitance, smaller overall size, and simplified assembly, thus meeting the broad needs of miniaturization without compromising performance.

     According to market research, the entire power supply industry is expected to grow to $34.92 billion by 2023, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7% from 2018 to 2023. Among them, AC/DC power conversion is considered to be the largest and fastest growing class of power supplies due to its use and application becoming more and more extensive. In this important and growing market, Kimi's CAS series SMD MLCC offers significant design and production advantages over leaded disc devices for AC line filtering.

     With the trend to increase functionality in the same or smaller space, and the demand from the industry and consumers for portable solutions, electronic products including power supply systems, their available PCB area is shrinking. Compared to Kimi's CAS series SMD MLCC, commonly used safety-certified disc devices with leads are larger and therefore generally not suitable for applications where filtering circuits are required but space is limited. Leaded disc devices also need to be installed on the PCB by plug-in, a process that is incompatible with the standard automatic reflow temperature curve and therefore incurs additional production costs.

     Filtering is important for mains supply products that need to manage unwanted transients, such as high frequency noise in line-to-line (class X) and line-to-ground (Class Y) applications. Safety-certified capacitors can be used in a variety of applications, such as power adapters for mobile devices, industrial power distribution, and power inverters for electric vehicles.

     Reggie Phillips, senior Product Manager at KEMET, commented at the product launch: "Until now, safety-certified capacitor technology has not kept pace with the development of MLCC technology. Our new CAS family allows engineers to fit the basic filter capacitors connected to the mains into a smaller space, thereby reducing the size of the board. The benefit for manufacturing professionals is that this new class of devices is compatible with standard reflow processes and therefore eliminates additional steps in the manufacturing process."