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.