I am confused with this! How capacitor blocks dc?

I have seen many circuits using capacitors powered by dc supply. So, if capacitor blocks dc
why should it be used in such circuits?
Also, voltage rating is mentioned as dc value in the capacitor. What does it signify?

capacitor dc

asked Aug 16 '11 at 15:36

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Arun M
9318

If you apply a direct current source to a capacitor, it will pass DC just fine
3 explodes, of course...) endolith Aug 16 '11 at 16:10

I like to imagine a capacitor as a latex membrane across a pipe carrying w

sides of the membrane, then the water will flow a little, stretching the mem
makes it obvious that if you connect it in serial then the water will only flo
connect in parallel the membrane will work to balance out small variations
15 at 8:47
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8 Answers

activeoldestvotes

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i think it would help to understand how a capacitor blocks DC (direct current) while
vote
down allowing AC (alternating current).
voteaccept Let's start with the simplest source of DC, a battery:

16
ed

When this battery is being used to power something, electrons are drawn into the + side
of the battery, and pushed out the - side.
Let's attach some wires to the battery:

There still isn't a complete circuit here (the wires don't go anywhere), so there is no
current flow.
But that doesn't mean that there wasn't any current flow. You see, the atoms in the
copper wire metal are made up of a nuclei of the copper atoms, surrounded by their
electrons. It can be helpful to think of the copper wire as positive copper ions, with
electrons floating around:

Note: i use the symbol e- to represent an electron

In a metal it is very easy to push the electrons around. In our case we have a battery
attached. It is able to actually suck some electrons out of the wire:

The wire attached to the positive side of the battery has electrons sucked out of it.
Those electrons are then pushed out the negative side of the battery into the wire
attached to the negative side.
It's important to note that the battery can't remove all the electrons. The electrons are
generally attracted to the positive ions they leave behind; so it's hard to remove all the
electrons.
In the end our red wire will have a slight positive charge (cause it's missing electrons),
and the black wire will have a slight negative charge (cause it has extra electrons).

So when you first connect the battery to these wires, only a little bit of current will
flow. The battery isn't able to move very many electrons, so the current
flows very briefly, and then stops.
If you disconnected the battery, flipped it around, and reconnected it: electrons in the
black wire would be sucked into the battery and pushed into the red wire. Once again
there would only a tiny amount of current flow, and then it would stop.

The problem with just using two wires is that we don't have very many electrons to
push around. What we need is a large store of electrons to play with - a large hunk of
metal. That's what a capicator is: a large chunk of metal attached to the ends of each
wire.
With this large chunk of metal, there are a lot more electrons we can easily push
around. Now the "positive" side can have a lot more electrons sucked out of it, and the
"negative" side can have a lot more electrons pushed into it:

So if you apply an alternating current source to a capicator, some of that current will be
allowed to flow, but after a while it will run out of electrons to push around, and the
flow will stop. This is fortunate for the AC source, since it then reverses, and current is
allowed to flow once more.

But why is a capacitor rated in DC volts

A capacitor isn't just two hunks of metal. Another design feature of the capicator is that
it uses two hunks of metal very close to each other (imagine a layer of wax paper
sandwiched between two sheets of tin foil).
The reason they use "tin foil" separated by "waxed paper" is because they want the
negative electrons to be very close to the positive "holes" they left behind. This causes
the electrons to be attracted to the positive "holes":

Because the electrons are negative, and the "holes" are positive, the electrons are

attracted to the holes. This causes the electrons to actually stay there. You can
now remove the battery and the capacitor will actually hold that charge.
This is why a capacitor can store a charge; electrons being attracted to the holes they
left behind.
But that waxed paper isn't a perfect insulator; it's going to allow some leakage. But the
real problem comes if you have too many electrons piled up. The electric field between
the two "plates" of the capacitor can actually get so intense that it causes a breakdown
of the waxed paper, permanently damaging the capacitor:

In reality a capacitor isn't made of tin foil and waxed paper (anymore); they use better
materials. But there is still a point, a "voltage", where the insulator between the two
parallel plates breaks down, destroying the device. This is the capacitor's rated
maximum DC voltage.
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edited Aug 18 '11 at 17:40

answered Aug 18 '11 at 0:49

Ian Boyd
2764

1 Thanks a lot! Neat and great explanation.. Arun M Aug 18 '11 at 2:51
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14down

vote

vote

Let me see if I can add one more perspective to the other 3 answers.
Capacitors act like a short at high frequencies and an open at low frequencies.
So here are two cases:

Capacitor in series with signal

In this situation, AC is able to get through, but DC is blocked. This is commonly called
a coupling capacitor.
Capacitor in parallel with signal

In this situation, DC is able to get through, but AC is shorted to ground causing it to be

blocked. This is commonly called a decoupling capacitor.
What is AC?
I have used the terms "High Freq" and "Low Freq" rather loosely as they don't really
have any numbers associated with them. I did this because what is considered low and
high depends on what is going on in the rest of the circuit. If you want to learn more
about this you can read about low-pass filters on Wikipedia or some of our RC
filter questions.
Voltage Rating
The voltage that you see with capacitors is the maximum voltage you can safely apply
to the capacitor before you start to run the risk of the capacitor physically breaking
down. Sometimes this happens as an explosion, sometimes fire, or sometimes just gets

hot.
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edited Aug 16 '11 at 17:57

answered Aug 16 '11 at 17:50

Kellenjb
10.7k11642

Kellen, I appreciate your use of pictures, but I'm missing an answer to the question how the cap blocks DC. You just sa
that it does. stevenvh Aug 17 '11 at 6:26

@Stevenvh I felt the the confusion that the OP had was not about the physics of how it blocks DC, but rather why it is
used if it does block DC. Plus I figured your answer did a pretty good of explaining it at a more physical level and didn
think I could explain that part any better than you. Kellenjb Aug 17 '11 at 11:54
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up

10

A simple way of thinking about it is that a series capacitor blocks DC, while a parallel
do capacitor helps maintain a steady voltage.

vote
wn vote

This is really two applications of the same behavior - a capacitor reacts to try to keep the
voltage across itself constant. In the series case, it's quite happy to remove a steady
voltage difference, but any abrupt change in one side will be passed through to the other
to keep the voltage difference constant. In the parallel case, any abrupt change in voltage
will be reacted to.
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answered Aug 16 '11 at 16:23

Chris Stratton
4,673514

nice simple answer, kudos vicatcu Aug 17 '11 at 17:38

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The explanation is in the fact that opposite charges attract each other. A capacitor is a
vote down compact construction of 2 conducting plates separated by a very thin insulator. If you put
vote
DC on it one side will be positively charged and the other side negatively. Both charges
attract each other but can't pass the insulating barrier. There's no current flow. So that's
end of story for DC.
For AC it's different. One side will successively be positively and negatively charged, and
attract negative and positive charges resp. So changes on one side of the barrier provoke
changes on the other side, so that it appears that the charges cross the barrier, and that

current effectively flows through the capacitor.

A charged capacitor is always DC charged, i.e. one side has the positive charges and the
other side the negative. These charges are a storage for electrical energy, which is
necessary in many circuits.
The maximum voltage is determined by the insulating barrier. Above a certain voltage it
will breakdown and create a short circuit. That can happen under DC but also under AC.
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edited Aug 17 '11 at 6:31

answered Aug 16 '11 at 17:10

stevenvh
59.5k483172

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The amount of charge that develops across the plates of a capacitor with a given voltage
vote do across its terminals is governed by the formula:

wn vote

Q=CV (charge = capacitance * voltage)

Differentiating both sides (current is the time derivative of charge), gives:

I=CdVdt (current = capacitance * the rate of change in voltage)

DC voltage is the same as saying dVdt=0.
So a capacitor allows no current to flow "through" it for DC voltage (i.e. it blocks DC).
The voltage across the plates of a capacitor must also change in a continuous manner, so
capacitors have the effect of "holding up" a voltage once they are charged to it, until that
voltage can be discharged through a resistance. A very common use for capacitors is
therefore stabilize rail voltages and decouple rails from ground.
The voltage rating is how much voltage you can apply across the plates before the electrostatic forces break down the material properties of the dielectric material between the plates
rendering it broken as a capacitor :).
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edited Aug 16 '11 at 17:09

answered Aug 16 '11 at 16:09

Madmanguruman
8,854319

vicatcu
6,556821

up

First off, a capacitor blocks DC and is a lower impedance to AC, while an inductor tends to
vote do block AC yet pass DC very easily. By "blocking", we mean than it offers a high impedance
wn vote to the signal we're talking about.

First, though, we need to define a few terms to explain this. You know what resistance is,
right? Resistance is the opposition to current flow that results in the burning of power,
measured in watts. It does not matter if the current is AC or DC, the power dissipated by a
perfect resistor is the same amount for either.
So resistance is one kind of "impedance" to current flow. There are 2 others - "inductive
reactance", and "capacitive reactance". Both are also measured in ohms, like resistance, but
both are different in that, for one thing, they vary with frequency, and for another, they don't
actually consume power like a resistance does. So all together, there are 3 kinds of
impedance - resistive, inductive, and capacitive.
The amount of blocking or impedance of inductors in ohms can be determined by:
XL = 2pi(f)L
Where 2pi is approximately 6.28, f is the frequency (AC, obviously) of a signal, L is the
inductance measured in henries, and where XL ("X sub L") is the inductive reactance in
ohms.
Inductive reactance is the impedance of a component due to inductance; it is a kind of
resistance, but does not actually burn power in watts like a resistor does, and since "f" for
frequency needs to be supplied, the value of it varies with frequency for a given inductor.
Notice that as the frequency goes up, so does the impedance ( AC resistance) in ohms. And
notice that if the frequency equals zero, then so does the impedance - a frequency of zero
means DC, so inductors have virtually no resistance to DC current flow. And as the
frequency goes up, so does the impedance.
Capacitors are the opposite- the formula for capacitive reactance is
XC = 1/(2pi(f)C)
Here, C is the capacitance of the cap in farads, "2pi" and "f" are the same as above, and XC
("X-sub-C") is the capacitive reactance in ohms. Notice that here, the reactance is "one
divided by" the frequency and the capacitance - this results in values of impedance that go
down with frequency and capacitance. So if the frequency is high, the impedance will be
low, and if the frequency is near zero, which is DC, the impedance will be nearly infinite in other words, capacitors block DC, but pass AC, and the higher the frequency of the AC

signal, the less the impedance to it.

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answered Aug 16 '11 at 18:11

manpreet dhillon
611

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I'll go for the shortest-answer qualitative-take-away approach:

vote do
wn vote A capacitor across DC rails is there, in effect, to short any AC signals that might otherwise

get onto the supply rails, so the amount of AC across your DC circuit is reduced.
The voltage rating on a cap is the maximum voltage (sum of DC and any AC present!) that
the cap should see. Exceed this voltage and the cap will fail.
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answered Aug 16 '11 at 22:09

JustJeff
12.4k11032