High Temperature Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors

High temperature power electronics have become a vital aspect of future designs of compact power converters for applications including power conditioning and distributed motor/actuator controls. However, the development of high temperature capacitors had lagged far behind other system components (e.g. semiconductor switches and that can operate at temperature >200°C). The performance of these systems would benefit significantly from components and packaging designed and optimized for high temperature (200°C to 400°C) under generally harsh environmental conditions.

In this paper it will be demonstrated that high temperature materials can be successfully fabricated into multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC). The properties of various capacitors having application range 200∼500°C will be presented. It will include NPO type material with capacitance range 10pF∼50nF useful up to 500°C and high Curie temperature Perovskite materials with a capacitance range 10nF∼50μF at working temperature of 200∼450°C. The properties variations of MLCCs with respect temperature and reliability data will also be presented.