Improvement of the Reliability of Dielectrics for MLCC

To achieve enough reliability of monolithic ceramic capacitor, it is important to know the contribution of grain boundary and grain interior to its reliability and insulation resistance. As the number of grain boundaries per layer increased, mean time to failure (MTTF) increased. In addition, as the number of grain boundaries per layer increased, samples showed lower current leakage in the measured electric field range. Using these data, the grain boundary E-J curves were determined by simulation. As a result, temperature and electric field dependence of insulation resistance of grain boundary were very low. The insulation characteristics of one BaTiO3 grain per layer were examined. The resistance and reliability of grain interior were very low. To improve the degradation resistance of grain interior, Ca-doped BaTiO3-based dielectrics were developed. The influence of Ca substitution on MTTF was investigated and it was found out that MTTF increased with the increase of Ca substitution.