Product Portfolio
AMS enjoys excellent relationships with several suppliers that manufacture capacitors for many different applications. Whether high voltage, pulse discharge, RF, filtering, precision or wound film capacitors, AMS Technologies has the expertise and product range to meet your requirements.
Our broad capacitor product portfolio ranges from ceramic capacitors for HF and high voltage operation and filter or snubber capacitors with polypropylene dielectrics to specialty vacuum/gas capacitors for high energy storage and pulse discharge all the way to capacitors for RF use or water-cooled devices rated to 4,000 kVA.
Custom designed capacitors tailored to your project’s requirements are also available on request, please contact the AMS Technologies capacitor experts to discuss your customized solution.
Ceramic Capacitors
Designed for RF and high voltage operation and with a very broad capacitance range, AMS Technologies’ ceramic capacitors cater to all applications from antenna matching units to high voltage testing systems. Our product portfolio includes many different package forms, including the classical disc capacitor as well as the standard hockey puck package style (standard designs used frequently in antenna matching units as part of an active circuit that matches the RF generator to the load), with the extra subassemblies of daisy chain and ferris wheels. For high power applications there are also water-cooled ceramic capacitors rated to 4,000 kVA.
Filter Capacitors
Filter capacitors are used in numerous applications, such as for maintaining power quality, in pulse forming networks, for snubbers and for filtering of output power. They are available in a wide range of sizes, package styles, power capabilities and voltages. By utilizing various dielectric systems and with a capacitance ranging from nanofarads up to millifarads, AMS Technologies can provide the right capacitor for most applications.
Capacitors for High Energy Storage, Pulse Discharge
Many applications demand an energy storage device that is slowly charged but then discharged in a very short period of time (down to less than milliseconds), thus generating a pulse of electrical energy. AMS Technologies can provide numerous solutions for your discharge capacitor needs, including commercially-priced products, variants with extreme high energy density, self-healing capabilities or very special shapes and designs.
High Frequency Capacitors
Specialised capacitors for RF use are available in many different variations (such as ceramic or evacuated ) to match various applications. AMS Technologies has profound experience in consulting and helping our customers to find the correct fixed or variable capacitor to suit their specific needs. Our ceramic disc and hockey puck HF capacitors use different ceramics, such as NPO, N750 and N3300, to yield specific characteristics (for example temperature coefficient). Our vacuum and gas filled capacitors (fixed and variable) are predominately used in antenna matching units, for applications like plasma generators, RF generators and for high power communication systems.
Related Products
For charging our capacitors, a comprehensive range of capacitor charging power supplies is available for voltages from 2 kV up to 80 kV with charging rates to 100 kJ/s. Input requirements range from 230 VAC single phase to higher voltage three phase depending on the charging rates required. A wide range of MIL, aerospace and other approvals are applicable.
In addition to capacitors, AMS Technologies carries a broad range of further passive components, including a large portfolio of resistors, featuring special resistor technologies with extremely low inductance, rated for especially high power (up to 100 kW), high voltage (up to 48 kV) or high temperatures (up to +275°C), variants for RF applications, but also components featuring extreme long-term stability (up to 0.025% per 1,000 hours in extended load life) or ultra-low temperature coefficients (as low as 2 ppm/°C). Packages range from small surface-mount versions all the way to 1-m-long water-cooled, high- load resistors with 10 cm in diameter.
Definition
Capacitors are passive electrical components that are used to store electrical charge in an electrical field. A capacitor’s main parameter is its electrical capacitance – this property indicates the amount of electrical charge the component can store depending on the voltage applied. The unit for capacitance is Farad (F).
Internally, a capacitor essentially consists of two electrically conductive surfaces (electrodes) with an insulating material (dielectric) between them, which separates the electrodes mechanically and electrically. The effective area of the electrodes, their distance from each other and the material constant of the dielectric determine the capacitance of the component. Electrodes and dielectric in the capacitor can be arranged flat in a plane or stacked, rolled up as a "coil" or in the form of sintered powder.
While an ideal capacitor in a DC circuit acts like an isolator and does not allow current to flow through the component, in an AC circuit it represents an AC resistance with frequency-dependent impedance. Due to this property, capacitors are often used as filter or resonance elements in low to high frequency AC circuits.
