Study of Ceramic Capacitor technology link to Electro Chemical Migration in Automotive Electronics

Modern Automotive products require the use of high reliability, fail safe MLCC (multilayer ceramic capacitors) on sensitive lines where short circuits and the risk of fire prevent the use of standard MLCC's. It was observed during environmental qualification tests involving high temperature and humidity that the exact technology in which the MLCC is built influences the severity and gravity of ECM (electro-chemical migration). In this paper the performance of 3 types of MLCC's to ECM is studied and the basic characteristic that a high reliability MLCC, form an environmental test point of view, are discussed.