An example of prior art chip capacitors is shown in FIG. 1. The chip capacitor shown in FIG. 1 includes a solid-state tantalum capacitor element 2 with a cathode layer 4 disposed on its outer surface. An anode lead 6 is led out from one end surface of the capacitor element 2. A flat cathode terminal 8 is connected to the cathode layer 4 with an electrically conductive adhesive (not shown). Also, a flat anode terminal 10 is welded to the tip end of the anode lead 6. An encapsulation 12 is provided by transfer molding with epoxy resin. Outer end portions of the flat anode and cathode terminals 10 and 8 are bent to extend along the end surfaces of the encapsulation 12 and, then, further bent to extend along the bottom surface of the encapsulation 12.
It is seen that a large proportion of the cathode terminal 8 is within the encapsulation 12, and the proportion of the volume occupied by the cathode terminal 8 to the entire volume of the encapsulation 12 is large. Further, both the cathode terminal 8 and the anode terminal 10 include portions extending on the side surfaces of the encapsulation 12. Accordingly, the length of the capacitor is increased by the thickness of these portions. In mounting such chip capacitor on a printed circuit board, the side surfaces of the cathode and anode terminals 8 and 10 are connected to the board by solder 14. Accordingly, when a number of such chip capacitors are to be mounted on a board side by side, as shown in FIG. 2, the spacing between adjacent chip capacitors must be large enough to prevent short-circuiting of adjacent capacitors, which prevents dense packing of the capacitors. Recently, smallsized, portable electric and electronic devices, such as cellular phones, have been remarkably improved, and chip capacitors to be used in such devices are required to be down-sized. For down-sizing prior art chip capacitors like the ones described above, the volume occupied by the capacitor element 2 in the chip capacitor including the encapsulation 12 should be as small as possible, which sometimes prevents the chip capacitor from having desired capacitance.
Therefore an object of the present invention is to provide a chip capacitor which makes high density packing possible, and can have desired capacitance, while being small in size.