Influence of Lamination Press on Resistance Degradation of X5R Ultra-thin MLCCs

Ultra-thin layer with high-reliability are proposed as an inevitable tendency in development of high-quality multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) and fundamental understanding of their electrical transport is crucial for further improving its reliability. In this work, X5R BaTiO
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-based samples with a thickness of 0.9 μm were prepared, and the manufacturing process on the reliability of MLCCs was evaluated. It is shown that the lamination press plays an important role in electrical-insulation degradation under highly accelerated life test (HALT) due to the grain size effect and the continuity of the Ni electrode. Especially, through thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) and XPS analysis, we found that the contribution of oxygen vacancies to continuity of the Ni electrode is significant: the activation energy of oxygen vacancies across grain-boundary is higher than 1.203 and 1.570 eV in samples with 60 and 70 MPa, respectively, probably due to high continuity of the Ni electrode. This work provides a picture illustrating the significant role of the oxygen vacancies in the lamination press of BaTiO
3
-based chips production, and points out an avenue to obtain high reliability in ultra-thin MLCCs.