[sdiy] Typical ESR of different capacitors

[Antti Huovilainen]

On Wed, 1 Sep 2010, Harry Bissell wrote:

> You could safely say that the electrolytic would have the highest ESR, the
> tantalum next, and the ceramic is ~probably~ the lowest.

Yes, but what are the ballpark figures? If a design requires max 1 ohm 
ESR, am I safe using a random tantalum for example?

Knowing the relative order of caps isn't much use when a blind guess could 
easily be an order of magnitude wrong in either direction (some LDO 
regulators also require high enough ESR to avoid instability).

On a related note, how does dissipation factor tie into ESR? Is it an 
entirely separate mechanism or can I deduce the approximate ESR of a cap 
from the DF (within caps of the same type obviously)?

Antti

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