From the course: Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits

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Decoupling capacitors

Decoupling capacitors

From the course: Electronics Foundations: Basic Circuits

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Decoupling capacitors

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- [Narrator] One common practical use for capacitors that's related to low-pass filtering is decoupling. Decoupling capacitors are used in circuits to remove unwanted high-frequency energy from DC power supply signals. You'll also see them referred to as bypass capacitors. Their goal is to help the DC power source remain as close to a perfectly constant voltage as possible. Unfortunately, all electronic devices will have unwanted fluctuations in their electrical signals called noise, which, if too strong can potentially interfere with the devices operation. When we look at a signal that has noise on an oscilloscope, the noise makes the signal randomly jump around the expected value. The sign wave on the top shows what a clean signal without any noise should look like, and the sign wave on the bottom shows a signal with random noise. This electrical noise comes from a variety of places. For example, when certain components in…

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