Interaction of PMN ceramics with silver termination inks

Several commercial silver termination inks have been evaluated for use with surface mount ceramic chip capacitors made from PMN material. After application and firing, the terminations were plated with nickel and tin or tin/lead by typical barrel plating techniques. It has been found that the various inks, termination and plating parameters affected not only the tendency for microcracks to develop near the termination, but also the ability of the capacitors to withstand the plating operations without degradation of the electrical properties of capacitance, dissipation factor and insulation resistance. Many of the ink characteristics appear to be related to the amount of Bi2O3 contained within the ink