When capacitor companies develop products, they choose materials with characteristics that will enable the capacitors to operate within the specified variation (3rd character) over the specified temperature range (1st and 2nd character). The X7R capacitors that I was using should not vary more than ±15% over a temperature range of −55°C to +125°C. OK, so either I had a bad …
Why Capacitance Changes & Capacitance Variation In our circuit applications, the capacitor can be and is subjected to various electrical, mechanical, and environmental stresses. One of the most noticeable effects of these stresses is the phenomena of capacitance variation.
Can we change the capacitor capacity by changing existing charge On the plates when it is connected to the battery? Seems like I remember that there is some sort of solid-state capacitor in which the capacitance can be changed by changing the voltage on it (or, equivalently, changing the charge on it).
These capacitors can be the size of a shoe-box to the size of a filing cabinet, so you just accept their size and weight, normally not portable at all. What does affect capacitance is the thickness of the dielectric, so the thinner the better, but it must be thick enough to block/handle the rated voltage.
But the stronger electric field is not the reason for the larger capacitance C C in the constant voltage case, the larger capacitance is due to the decreased distance d d between the plates independent of the voltage across (consider the increase in capacitance in the case that the voltage V V across the capacitor is the constant V = 0 V = 0).
We see, then, that the major factor involved in why the capacitance changes is the fact that K does vary. In order to clearly understand the various factors that cause K to change, and to what extent these changes take place for the common dielectrics, the following clarification is of interest.
This constant of proportionality is known as the capacitance of the capacitor. Capacitance is the ratio of the change in the electric charge of a system to the corresponding change in its electric potential. The capacitance of any capacitor can be either fixed or variable, depending on its usage.