Development and performance of high temperature power conversion capacitors

Certain military and commercial applications require capacitors that can operate at high temperatures, high energy density, with long lifetimes. This paper describes life testing of capacitors with energy densities as high as 0.2 J/cc at >125°C. Capacitors using the same dielectrics but with a higher packing factor design can achieve the same performance but with energy densities >0.3 J/cc at 100°C. Data on dissipation factor, energy density, ripple current capability, lifetime, and other performance parameters are presented. This work was sponsored by the US Army Research Laboratory.