Are there pros/cons between using a 0.1uf ceramic capacitor vs a metal film capacitor? Is one used primarily for certain types of circuits, or what? They seem to cost about the same, and all of the books I've read only talk about the differences between electrolytic and ceramic?
Metal film is relatively new, and is more for higher capacitance needs, such as temporary power for memory retention during battery change. or high inrush current situations like motor starting.
Ceramic capacitors are fine for that low of a capacitance, more for filtering if I read you correctly,
-Carl
Metal film capacitors aren't suitable for MCU decoupling. They have been around for many years, BTW.
Ceramics have low serial inductance and resistance, giving them a high self-resonant frequency, meaning they can decouple logic. Well, there's a little more to it than that!
Many other capacitor technologies don't look much like a capacitor at nanosecond timescales (where stray inductance is hugely important).
However ceramics are not good for low-loss or high-accuracy low-frequency circuit design... Here polystyrene and PTFE and mica are good IIRC.