Electrode Electrode An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or air). The word was coined by William Whewell at the request of the scientist Michael Faraday from two Greek words: "elektron", meaning amber (from which the word electricity is derived), and "hodos", a way. The electrophore, invented by Johan Wilcke, was an early version of an electrode used to study static electricity. An electrode in an electrochemical cell is referred to as either an "anode" or a "cathode" (words that were coined by William
Electrolytic capacitor are therefore smaller than aluminium electrolytic capacitors. In practice different safety margins to reach reliable components makes a comparison difficult. The anodically generated insulating oxide layer is destroyed if the polarity of the applied voltage changes. Electrolytic capacitors are based on the principle of a "plate capacitor" whose capacitance increases with larger electrode area A, higher dielectric permittivity ε, and thinner dielectric (d). The dielectric thickness of electrolytic capacitors is very small, in the range of nanometers per volt. On the other hand, the voltage strengths of these oxide layers are quite high. With this very thin dielectric oxide layer