capacitor doubt

[marceloherman]

hello guys,

i have a important doubt with capacitors in a project.

on the eletric schema there is about 5 capacitors. his simbol is something like this --)|-- instead the traditional --||-- symbol....

i'm reading about capacitors and the single difference between ceramics and eletrolytics is the polarization....and the price.....

one capacitor's specification is 0.1uF 16V

My question is: can I use ceramic capacitors or I must to use polarized capacitors? or the type of the capacitor doesnt matter?

thanks everybody...

regards from brazil.

marcelo h.

[Simon (Webmaster)]

Hi

I'd say it should be OK to use ceramic capacitors, but perhaps you could tell us a bit more about the circuit they are being used in and their application? Often 0.1uF are used for decoupling of the supply close to ICs, although in this application I would normally use ceramic capacitors anyway.

It should be perfectly safe to replace a polarised electrolytic with a ceramic (but not the other way around), but there may be a specific reason why the designer has chosen an electrolytic.

[marceloherman]

i'm building a scanner to diagnostics my car's central unit. Whith a software, i can read some errors code of the eletronic fuel injection and somethings else.....

the complete schema cand be found here:

http://www.elmelectronics.com/DSheets/ELM327DS.pdf

elm 327 is the main CI of the circuit....and on this data sheet there is the components list....i'm building to use the computer serial interface.....

the 27pF and 560pF I bought and are ceramic capacitors.....but i dont know exactly about the other capacitor....

thank you for your reply..

marceloh.

[Simon (Webmaster)]

From the schematic the 0.1uF capacitors all appear to be for decoupling. In this application ceramic should be fine.