Spherical Capacitor Calculator

Created by Dominik Czernia, PhD
Reviewed by Bogna Szyk and Steven Wooding
Last updated: Jan 10, 2023

This spherical capacitor calculator will help you to find the optimal parameters for designing a spherical capacitor with a specific capacitance.

Unlike the most common parallel-plate capacitor, spherical capacitors consist of two concentric spherical conducting shells separated by a dielectric.

Read on to learn about the capacitors, the spherical capacitor equation, and about two combinations of spherical capacitors.

💡 Need to learn more about capacitance? Then our capacitance calculator might be just what you need.

What is a capacitor?

A capacitor is one of the essential elements of the electrical circuit which can store and release electric charge.

Capacitors are widely used in many electronic devices to perform a variety of tasks, such as smoothing, filtering, or bypassing an electrical signal. The construction of the capacitor is straightforward – they mainly consist of two separate plates.

To determine the amount of electric charge that a capacitor can store, we use a quantity called capacitance. The more electric charge capacitor can hold, the higher its capacitance. To further improve capacitance, we can fill the space between plates with some nonconducting dielectric medium.

💡 Confused by capacitor codes? Then our capacitor code calculator is here to help you.

Spherical capacitor with dielectric equation

You can calculate the capacitance of a spherical capacitor using the following formula:

$\small C = \frac{4 \pi \varepsilon_0 \varepsilon_k}{1/a - 1/b}$

where:

• $C$ – Capacitance measured in farads (symbol: F);
• $\varepsilon_0$ – Vacuum permittivity – a constant value of $\small 8.85 \times 10^{−12}\ \text{F/m}$ (farads per meter);
• $\varepsilon_k$ – Relative permittivity (it is dimensionless);
• $a$ – Radius of the inner sphere; and
• $b$ – Radius of the outer sphere.

The relative permittivity $\varepsilon_k$ is a constant characteristic for a specific dielectric placed between the capacitor plates. In our spherical capacitor calculator, we assumed for simplicity that there is a vacuum between plates and, therefore, $\varepsilon_k = 1$. If you want to change the material located between plates, go to the advanced mode of the spherical capacitor calculator.

Spherical capacitors in parallel or series

Spherical capacitors can be combined in parallel and series, too!

• Imagine that our capacitor consists of three concentric spheres where spaces between them are filled with different dielectrics. We can treat those spaces like separate capacitors combined in series (see capacitors in series calculator), and we can calculate the total capacitance in the same way as parallel resistors – parallel resistor calculator.

• Now imagine that our capacitor consists of two concentric spheres, but the space between them is divided into two halves, in which the space between shells is filled with different dielectrics. We can treat both halves as separate capacitors combined in parallel (see the parallel capacitor calculator), and the total capacitance can be calculated in the same way as resistors in series.

Dominik Czernia, PhD
in
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Capacitance
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