Scintillation testing is a method that activates the self-healing mechanism in tantalum
capacitors. In preliminary experiments, the deliberate activation of self-healing yielded
up to 27% higher breakdown voltages in weak parts that had an increased risk of ignition
failure. This improvement results in a better performance under surge current conditions.
This paper demonstrates that scintillation conditioning reduces surge current failures in
tantalum capacitors with manganese dioxide cathodes. Tantalum capacitors with MnO2
cathodes from two manufacturers are subjected to scintillation conditioning and
compared to non-conditioned populations in a surge current test. To ensure that the
activation of the self-healing mechanism has no detrimental effect on the reliability of the
parts, a life test is conducted. The results show that the conditioning method increases the
breakdown voltage of self-healed tantalum capacitors by up to 25% under surge current
conditions, which mitigates the risk of ignition failures. No detrimental effect on the life
of the conditioned samples was observed.
Additional tests to assess the reliability of tantalum capacitors with manganese dioxide
cathodes under simultaneous thermo-mechanical and voltage stresses were performed.
Even though these tests are not directly related to scintillation conditioning the study was
included as an additional chapter, since it pertains to the general subject of tantalum
capacitor reliability
