μblog: engineering from the trenches

Capacitors are the most interesting electrically in the same way that the sickest person in an emergency room is the most interesting medically. They have more fine details than the resistors and inductors, so I will try to attack the problem in four sections: device parasitics, dielectric absorption, dissipation and temperature effects. (more…)

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Inductors can be separated into two categories: those specifically chosen to be inductors and stray inductances in PCBs and components. For inductors, parasitic characteristics arise from the ohmic losses in the conductor, from capacitance between coils from the core and from mutual inductances with other magnetic components. (more…)

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Undoubtedly, the basic building block of any circuit is the lowly resistor. The apparent simplicity of this device often allows designers to overlook some non-ideal properties that cause to performance degradation in high-performance circuits. Here, I will try to go over some of these properties of resistors so as to help others avoid common pit-falls. (more…)

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