[snip]
> 2) Do you know of any "capacitors-are-my-life" consultants who can give
> me better insight into capacitor failure mechanisms and how to avoid
> them?
[snip]
For tantalum caps, here's one vendor's (AVX Corp.) suggestions for
surge failure prevention (I haven't read either very thoroughly, both
contain bibliographies pointing to lots of related material); all articles
are in Adobe PDF format:
o "Increasing Reliability of SMD Tantalum Capacitors in Low
Impedance Applications", D. Mattingly
http://www.avxcorp.com/tech/techpdf/rel_ti.pdf
o "Surge in Solid Tantalum Capacitors", J. Gill
http://www.avxcorp.com/tech/techpdf/solid_ti.pdf
Also, they have a number of decoupling-related technical
articles related to decoupling (quality varies); see
http://www.avxcorp.com/tech/library.htm
for the index.
-Tim Postel
Synopsys (formerly Viewlogic Advanced Development (formerly Quad Design))