Eritrea Tantalum Capacitor Price Trend

Computers are particularly tantalum intensive and a tantalum stream from recycled electronics has contributed to the supply chain each year in a multi-year effort toward sustainability. Tantalum capacitors have an excellent market outlook in automotive electronics.

The supply chain for tantalum capacitors begins in the ground. Certain materials, such as tantalum, are critical to the production of capacitors (anode), resistors (thin film) and semiconductors (diffusion layer) and must be mined before they can be processed into a usable form.

About 50 percent of tantalum volume is consumed in capacitor anodes each year. In the monthly report we track the price per pound of tantalite. An understanding of the tantalum capacitor supply chain is important in establishing a clear picture of the sub-sets of the global components trade.

Tantalum capacitors are manufactured in both surface mount and leaded configurations. Ninety percent of production of tantalum capacitors produced in the world today are surface mount configurations (based upon dollar value). Surface mount designs are predominantly in the molded chip design; however, a coated chip is also produced for the market.

All other tantalum capacitors use a dry electrolyte based upon manganese nitrite or the new conductive polymer cathode materials: polypyrrole, polythiophene and polyaniline (as a sealer). The molded chip design is manufactured by molding the capacitor pellet in a fixed shape mold after the pellet has been attached to a lead frame.

The molded tantalum chip capacitor is the largest segment of the tantalum capacitor market based upon configuration with the majority of global consumption value. Molded chips are used in almost every end-use market, especially computers, handsets, automobiles, cameras, game consoles and many additional modern electronic devices.