Capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) is one of the most common industrial plasma sources. Experimental characterization plays key roles in understanding the complex physics involved in CCP, and is based on various probes, optical monitoring and mass spectrometry. Some recent configurations of capacitive discharge like dual frequency CCP, direct current CCP and electric asymmetric CCP have been extensively studied experimentally with these methods. In this paper, we review these recent experimental progresses of CCP studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.