Capacitors: Operating principles, current market and technical trends

The worldwide market for capacitors was approximately US$ 12.3 billion in 1993, of which production within Japan accounted for approximately 50% and the combined domestic and overseas production of Japanese manufacturers accounted for approximately 70%, The worldwide capacitor market continues to grow by approximately 20% per year as the demand for ICs and LSIs is growing. In conjunction with this special issue on capacitors, this paper presents a corporate perspective on current trends in the capacitor market: capacitor principles; capacitor materials; capacitor types and major characteristics; recent technical trends in capacitors and the future market outlook, and technical problems in the hope of facilitating the understanding of ideas and concepts presented in other papers in this issue.