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Capacitor

100nF Ceramic Capacitor

100nF X7R ceramic — the standard local decoupling cap for every IC's power pin.

Generic (every passive-components manufacturer)

Voltage
Package
Pins
2
Interfaces
Lifecycle
Unknown
Footprint
Not verified

Overview

A small, stable, non-polarized ceramic capacitor at the value that goes next to almost every IC's supply pin on almost every PCB ever made. The reason: an IC's internal logic switches state in nanoseconds, which means its instantaneous current demand spikes far faster than the power rail's own regulator (or even the copper trace leading to it) can respond — parasitic trace inductance alone is enough to make a distant supply look 'slow' at those timescales. A 100nF cap placed right next to the pin acts as a tiny local charge reservoir with almost no inductance in its path, supplying that fast current spike locally while the trace and regulator catch up over the following microseconds. Skip it and you get supply-rail ringing, logic glitches, or a chip that resets itself under load — intermittent, hard-to-diagnose failures that vanish the moment someone probes the board with a scope (loading down the very ringing that caused the problem). X7R dielectric is the usual pick for this job: stable enough across temperature and DC bias for a bypass role, though not as flat as C0G/NP0 (which costs more and is reserved for precision analog, not bulk decoupling). Not a substitute for a bulk/reservoir capacitor on a whole power rail — see electrolytic-470uf-25v for that job; the two are normally used together, one per IC plus one bulk cap per board or per section.

Wiring tip: one per IC, right next to the VCC/GND pins — not a substitute for a bulk capacitor

capacitorpassivedecouplingceramicx7rgeneric

Pins & wiring

01Pin map
2 positions

100nF Ceramic Capacitor

Linear package

Physical pin order shown left to right.

Other

All pins

Selected pin

1

Other
Direction
Passive

No polarity — ceramic capacitors work either way round.

Full pin table
PinNameRoleDirectionNote
1OtherPassiveNo polarity — ceramic capacitors work either way round.
2OtherPassive

Wiring examples

Local decoupling on an IC's supply pin

Placed as physically close as possible to the IC's VCC/GND pins, with the shortest practical trace — the whole point is minimizing the inductance between the cap and the pin it's protecting.

100nF Ceramic Capacitor pinConnects toNote
1MPU-6050 · vccIllustrative target — this pattern applies next to nearly any IC's supply pin, not just this one.
2MPU-6050 · gnd
  • Placement matters as much as value here — a 100nF cap wired in with long traces, far from the pin it's meant to protect, does much less good than one tucked directly underneath or beside the IC.
  • This does not replace a bulk/reservoir capacitor on the rail feeding multiple ICs — see electrolytic-470uf-25v for that role. Boards typically need both.

Specifications

Electrical

Capacitance
100 nFsrc
Voltage Rating
Varies by vendor
Tolerance
Varies by vendor

Performance

ESR
Ripple Current
N/A

Physical

Package
Varies by vendor
Dielectric
X7R
Mounting
Varies by vendor

Footprint

No independently verified physical footprint is on file for this part yet.

Alternatives

No alternatives are on file yet for this part.

Documents

No documents or CAD assets are on file for this part yet.

Frequently asked questions

What voltage does the 100nF Ceramic Capacitor run at?

Banana Board does not have a verified operating voltage on file for the 100nF Ceramic Capacitor yet — check the datasheet in Documents before wiring it up.

How many pins does the 100nF Ceramic Capacitor have?

The 100nF Ceramic Capacitor has 2 pins. See the full pinout table in Pins & wiring for each pin's role.

Can I simulate the 100nF Ceramic Capacitor before ordering hardware?

Not yet — the 100nF Ceramic Capacitor does not have a live simulation model in Banana Board today, so validate the wiring here and test on real hardware.

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