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hadoque
Sep18-11, 07:02 AM
Hi
i'm looking at an impedance curve of a non-ideal tantalum capacitor in LTSpice. The test circuit and impedance curve is seen in this screengrab:
http://www.apspektakel.com/bilder/tantal.png
The spice file is here http://www.apspektakel.com/bilder/tantal.asc.
So, the imdpedance curve shows the expected impedance minimum, but also an unexpected maximum at about 100MHz, where there is also a polarity switch in phase. This feature does not show up if I do an impedance plot in octave:

octave:1> f = [1000:1000:1e9];
octave:2> C = 2e-3
C = 0.0020000
octave:3> R = 2e-3
R = 0.0020000
octave:4> L = 1e-9
L = 1.0000e-09
octave:5> z = R + f.*2*pi*j*L-1./(f.*2*pi*j*C)
octave:6> loglog(f,abs(z))
octave:7> semilogx(f,atand(imag(z)./real(z)))

Which result in these plots
http://www.apspektakel.com/bilder/tantal.svg
http://www.apspektakel.com/bilder/phase.svg

The parameters in the octave code are the same as in LTSpice component. Anyone know where this comes from? The phases look pretty different, is there something wrong with the test circuit?

jsgruszynski
Sep20-11, 01:29 PM
You may want to look at the LTSpice model more closely. That looks like a typical parasitic resonance curve. If the model has a parasitic inductance built into it to model non-idealities, it would look just like that. The Octave simulation is an ideal capacitor so you don't see it.

hadoque
Sep20-11, 02:20 PM
Since I posted I've found out just that. The spice models has a non-zero parallel capacitance as default. It's disabled by setting the parallel capacitance to zero.