Polarized capacitor

[thushy]

Can anyone explain the differences between polarized and non-polarized capacitors. And where/why you use the polarized ones. Thanks in advance.

 

[Sceadwian]

Questions like this are best answered by searching for yourself on the Internet, sites such as Wikipedia will provide you with hours of reading about such basic topics.

Polarized capacitors rely on a thin oxide layer to provide very high capacitance (because it's thin) for a given space. The problem is when the voltage is reversed on these kinds of capacitors the oxide layer breaks down and your capacitor quickly turns into a resistor, and a bad one at that.