Murata, GCE series

Murata - Fail safe ceramic capacitor for automotive applications

News Release from: Murata Electronics (UK) Ltd.
07 July 2011

Murata has announced the launch of the GCE series of monolithic ceramic capacitors that are less prone to failure due to mechanical stress.

With a soft termination of the capacitive element, the mechanical stress induced by board flexing or a wide variation of temperature is less likely to cause the capacitor body to crack. This is achieved by using a conductive resin for the terminations, and increases the body’s ability to absorb such stress. In addition, by using a multi-layer serial capacitor (MLSC) approach to the construction, the GCE series will not easily short-circuit either. This technique uses an internal “floating” plate that creates an equivalent circuit of two capacitors in series. In this way, a short circuit condition is highly unlikely to happen due to component failure. This makes the GCE series ideal for a broad range of automotive applications where safety is crucial.
The GCE series is available in 0603 and 0805 sizes, covering all nominal working voltages in the range 50 – 100V with the popular capacitance values of 10, 22, 47 and 100 nF.