Here's the opinion of my "expert" who has been designing and breadboarding
custom microprocessors and electronics stuff for 15 years  -- Oh, BTW, the
Ta capacitors on my board are rated for 16V and are on a 5V circuit.

Al

Subject: Re: FW: [FlyRotary] Re: EC2 question

A few things to know about tantalum capacitors:
Just about all electronic devices manufactured in the last 25 years use tantalum capacitors.  If the explosion problem was an issue, then cell phones, laptops, auto engine controllers, medical life support equipment, satellites, televisions, nuclear power plants would all be having problems.  And believe me, when it comes to consumer electronics, there is no voltage de-rating because a higher voltage capacitor costs more.

Although the more I think about it, the idea of exploding cell phones is appealing, especially when people are talking while driving.:-)

The claim about not using tantalum capacitors in aircraft is dubious.  If this were the case, then nobody would be able to bring their electronics on-board a commercial aircraft.  I would find it amazing if your EFIS/GPS doesn't have tantalum capacitors in it.

I'm quite certain that Tracy already has tantalum caps on the ECU board.  The primary failure mode of this type of capacitor is a short circuit.  Since it's unlikely to have two fail at once, the short would be isolated to one controller and you would fly on the other.

In all of the circuits I've designed, I have never had a board come back from the field with a failed tantalum capacitor.  All of the failures I've seen (2) occurred in the first few seconds of testing (1) or because the electronic assembler installed the capacitor backwards (reverse polarity) (1).