Industrial Espionage Implicated
The large number of failures of aluminum electrolytic capacitors with liquid electrolytes are based on millions of faulty capacitors produced in the years 1999 to 2007 by some (but not all) Taiwanese manufacturers whose products started failing prematurely after only a few months of operation. Many of the capacitors had a life span specification (load life) of 2000 hours at 105°C. With a lower average internal temperature of 45°C on a printed circuit board and a ripple current within the data sheet specifications, these capacitors should have a life expectancy of about 15 years of continuous operation. With respect to this life span expectation, a failure after 1.5 to 2 years is very premature.
The images of the failures were quite spectacular — bulged or burst cans, expelled sealing rubber and leaking electrolyte were found on countless circuit boards. Many well-known equipment manufacturers such as Apple, Dell, Cisco, Intel, Asus and Abit had to carry out recalls and reimburse repair costs because of these capacitors. In addition to manufacturer recall programs, detailed repair instructions for self-help can be found on the Internet.
A major cause of the plague of faulty capacitors was industrial espionage in connection with the theft of an electrolyte formula. A researcher is suspected of having taken, when moving from Japan to Taiwan, the secret chemical composition of a new low-resistance, inexpensive, water-containing electrolyte. The researcher subsequently tried to imitate this electrolyte formula in Taiwan, to undersell the pricing of the Japanese manufacturers. However, the secret formula had apparently been copied incompletely, and it lacked important proprietary ingredients which were essential to the long-term stability of the capacitors.
There are no known public court proceedings related to alleged theft of electrolyte formulas. However, independent laboratory analysis of defective capacitors has shown that many of the premature failures do appear to be associated with high water content and missing inhibitors in the electrolyte, as described later in this article.
Read more about this topic: Capacitor Plague
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