Why MLCC capacitors have a different colors ranging from Brown to White?
I wonder if it is related to ceramic / dielectric type or maybe some manufacturing reasons? Maybe manufactures add pigment in purpose?
I have noticed that capacitors of the same parameters and type can have a different colors depending on supplier.
OEM's are free to use any material source they want to bake the parts. Only the biggest OEM's (Japanese) make their own slurry of material which has a color common to the basic mix of ceramics. There are more ceramic types than colours I suspect but perhaps the fundamental metal materials determine the colour codes.
For example C0G, X5R and X7R are different shades of tan which have different thermal properties.
for Example a ceramic with Zinc may be a lighter gray colour.
C0G CK CJ CH SL U2J UJ X8G X7R X7S X7T X7U R X6S X6T X5R B
MgNb2O6
ZnNb2O6
MgTa2O6
ZnTa2O6
(ZnMg)TiO3
(ZrSn)TiO4
Ba2Ti9O20
The dispersed transition metals of Niobium Nb, Tantalum, Ta and Zirconium, Zr with metals particles like Mg, Zn, Sn and dielectric Oxides using Oxygen. These get mixed in a slurry to make the end result with the multilayer deposited electrodes.
So my guess it is the basic metals or transition metals that determine the colour of the resulting dielectric, and not the class or code type or the recipe mix of particles in the slurry that achieve these code types.
NP0 is often said "NP-oh" the Americanized origin of NP"zero" which stands for 0 temp. coefficient (NP=+/-50ppm/C). There is also N150 (-150ppm/'C), N300, P100 etc. which is similar but NP determine polarity and the number indicates PPM or parts per million/'C for temperature compensation uses. such as to compensate for the tempco of inductors in an LC filter or resonator.
NP0 uses C0G ceramic material so these are interchangable in meaning.
C0G is also not piezoelectric like other ceramics and has the lowest k constant so these are quite limited in value range.
