Capacitors Blog

Tantalum bead capacitors are polarised and have low voltage ratings like electrolytic capacitors. They are expensive but very small, so they are used where a large capacitance is needed in a small size.

Modern tantalum bead capacitors are printed with their capacitance, voltage and polarity in full. However older ones use a colour-code system which has two stripes (for the two digits) and a spot of colour for the number of zeros to give the value in µF. The standard colour code is used, but for the spot, grey is used to mean × 0.01 and white means × 0.1 so that values of less than 10µF can be shown. A third colour stripe near the leads shows the voltage (yellow 6.3V, black 10V, green 16V, blue 20V, grey 25V, white 30V, pink 35V). The positive (+) lead is to the right when the spot is facing you: 'when the spot is in sight, the positive is to the right'.

For example: blue, grey, black spot means 68µF
For example: blue, grey, white spot means 6.8µF
For example: blue, grey, grey spot means 0.68µF