DC-Link Power Capacitors Technological Advances For Power Electronics Design

The technology behind capacitors has been around since late 1745 when a physicist in Germany found that an electrical charge could be stored by connecting a high-voltage electrostatic generator by a wire to a volume of water in a hand-held glass jar. Although different materials have been used over the years - from glass to paper to ceramics - it wasn't until the 1950s that Bell Laboratories developed a more reliable and miniaturized low-voltage support capacitor to complement their newly invented transistor. The technology has not changed significantly since until this century.