Further Increase MLCC Reliability With CSAM Testing

When an electrical device fails, oftentimes, the root cause can be traced to a field failure of a capacitor. While it is rare for the failure to be caused by a capacitor defect that was introduced during manufacturing, it can happen. This is especially true when multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) are used versus other more simplistic capacitor types such as single-layer capacitors (SLCs) since the manufacturing process involves stacking many layers of dielectric and electrodes on top one another.

As a result of this layered configuration, there are a number of issues that can be introduced during the manufacturing process that are not problematic when working with SLCs. While standard electrical testing can screen out the majority of problematic parts, there are a couple common issues, mainly delamination and voids, that these tests may not always detect.