Scintillation testing is a method that activates the self-healing mechanism in tantalum

capacitors. In preliminary experiments, the deliberate activation of self-healing yielded

up to 27% higher breakdown voltages in weak parts that had an increased risk of ignition

failure. This improvement results in a better performance under surge current conditions.

This paper demonstrates that scintillation conditioning reduces surge current failures in

tantalum capacitors with manganese dioxide cathodes. Tantalum capacitors with MnO2

cathodes from two manufacturers are subjected to scintillation conditioning and

compared to non-conditioned populations in a surge current test. To ensure that the

activation of the self-healing mechanism has no detrimental effect on the reliability of the

parts, a life test is conducted. The results show that the conditioning method increases the

breakdown voltage of self-healed tantalum capacitors by up to 25% under surge current

conditions, which mitigates the risk of ignition failures. No detrimental effect on the life

of the conditioned samples was observed.

Additional tests to assess the reliability of tantalum capacitors with manganese dioxide

cathodes under simultaneous thermo-mechanical and voltage stresses were performed.

Even though these tests are not directly related to scintillation conditioning the study was

included as an additional chapter, since it pertains to the general subject of tantalum

capacitor reliability.