A study of ceramic addition in end termination of multilayer ceramics capacitors with cofiring process

The silver paste with ceramics addition as end termination was performed on multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) based on ZnO–B2O3 + Zn0.95Mg0.05TiO3 + 0.25TiO2 ceramic (ZnBO-ZMT′) with Ag95–Pd05 internal electrodes. A green sheet was prepared by tape casting using the ZnBO-ZMT′ powders. Ag95–Pd05 was attached on the green sheet as an internal electrode. After lamination, the green chips were pre-sintered at 800 °C for 1 h, then samples were dipped the external electrodes and were cofired together at 900 °C for 2 h. There is no extra curing process, so the production cost may be cut down and thermal shock of the MLCCs may be reduced. To improve the mismatch between end termination and dielectric body during sintering, the silver paste with different amounts of ceramics, e.g., 20, 30 and 40 wt.%, was added in this study. The mechanical and electrical properties of the MLCCs were investigated subsequently. The results showed that end termination with 40 wt.% ceramic addition has good performances on mechanical properties of MLCC, but equivalent series resistance (ESR) is a little bit higher compared to end termination with 20 and 30 wt.% ceramic addition.