Residual Stress of Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors with Ni-Electrodes (Ni-MLCCs)

The residual stress of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) has been studied. The capacitance decreased significantly under external compressive stress applied to MLCCs in the thickness direction, on the other hand, the capacitance increased under external stress in the width direction. These capacitance changes depended on the number of dielectric layers in MLCCs. The compressive residual stress at the surface of MLCCs has been shown by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The stress increased with the number of dielectric layers in MLCCs. Moreover the tensile stress was confirmed in the thickness direction of MLCCs by XRD analysis also. Therefore the dependence of electrical characteristics dependence on the number of dielectric layers, i.e. , apparent dielectric constant, temperature dependence of capacitance, and aging deterioration can be explained by the residual stress.