Derating design approach of aluminum electrolytic capacitor for reliability improvement

알루미늄 전해 커패시터의 신뢰성 향상을 위한 Derating 설계 연구

This paper presents a derating design approach for reliability improvement of an aluminum electrolytic capacitor. The capacitor, usually mounted in a printed circuit board, is used to stabilize the circuit. The main failure mechanism of interest is dry-up of the electrolyte that is mainly caused by two stresses-temperature and voltage. The lifetime under these stresses is modeled as a function of these stresses and time using accelerated life testing. Quantitative variation in the lifetime, according to variations in these stresses, is investigated to perform the derating design of the capacitor so that the stress levels are selected to achieve required reliability measures for reliability improvement. Moreover, sensitivity analysis shows which stress would be a more important factor determining the lifetime.