Ceramic Capacitors

Ceramic capacitors are the parts you place more than any other passive on a board, and they are usually the first thing to go short on an allocation cycle. The category splits roughly into two camps. Class 1 dielectrics like C0G and NP0 are stable, low-loss parts for RF matching, filters, and timing circuits, with tight tolerance and almost no capacitance drift over temperature or voltage. Class 2 and 3 dielectrics like X7R, X5R, and Y5V trade that stability for far higher capacitance in the same footprint, which makes them the default for decoupling and bulk bypass. Most of what buyers actually source is MLCC in 0201, 0402, 0603, and 0805, plus leaded ceramic discs and safety-rated X1/Y2 parts for mains-connected designs. When engineers send us an RFQ for ceramic capacitors, the conversation almost never stops at capacitance and voltage. They want to know the dielectric code, because an X7R behaves very differently from a Y5V at the same rating, and they care about DC bias derating, which can cut effective capacitance in half on high-K parts near rated voltage. Tolerance matters on C0G filter work, less so on bypass. Procurement teams ask about factory packaging, since cut tape and partial reels raise the risk of mishandled or remarked stock, and full reels from traceable lots cost a bit more but save arguments later. That is the real trade-off in this category: the cheapest offer on a hot part number is often cheap for a reason, and a few cents saved per thousand pieces is not worth a counterfeit lot on a production run. We stock and source ceramic capacitors across Murata, TDK, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Yageo, KEMET, AVX, and others, including allocated and end-of-life part numbers. Check live stock or send your BOM for a quote at icxing.com.