RC high-pass filter

AC circuits and filters · Intermediate · about 15 minutes · part of Zen’s Electronics Design Mastery

Swap R and C and the filter turns around: the series capacitor blocks DC and low frequencies, and passes high frequencies with a phase lead.

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How it works

Try it on the bench

1. Try 16 Hz: the output is about a tenth of the input and leads by almost 90°.
2. Try 1600 Hz: nearly everything passes in phase.
3. Open Tools… → Bode plotter and run a sweep: read the −3 dB corner off the curve and compare it with fc in the theory. Change a part and run again; the two curves overlay.

Parts on the bench

• AC source
• Film capacitor
• Resistor
• 2 × Digital multimeter
• Oscilloscope

In the course

Zen’s Electronics Design Mastery, module “AC & Reactance”.

More on ac circuits and filters

• RC low-pass filter
• RLC series circuit
• RLC parallel circuit
• Single-phase AC circuit
• Peak, peak-to-peak and RMS
• Reactance of L and C
• Capacitors in series and parallel
• Twin-T notch filter