Effective rare-earth doping on semiconductor behavior for BaTiO3-based automotive MLCCs

Abstract

Highly accelerated lifetime test (HALT) for lifetime evaluation was performed on the state-of-art automotive MLCC prototypes by varying Dy/Mg (donor/acceptor) ratio added to BaTiO3. The results clearly showed that the mean time to failure (MTTF) more than 280 times as the Dy/Mg ratio increased from 1.0 to 10.0. Since oxygen vacancies typically form in-gap state/defect at the donor level, the activation energy value under thermal activation process as a function of voltage was calculated and compared by non-destructive testing (I–V curve) for an accurate evaluation of the extrinsic behavior. It was found that barrier height at the Ni/BT interface decreases as the voltage increases, resulting in a decrease in activation energy. As the Dy/Mg ratio increases, the density of defects/in-gap states formed at the donor level in the bandgap by oxygen vacancies decreases, which may lead to a decrease in the number of electrons excited by the external voltage. Furthermore, it was verified that the calculated Schottky barrier height of the 10.0 Dy/Mg ratio under voltage has higher value than that of the 2.6 Dy/Mg ratio. Based on the results of this study, we propose a new indicator for the design of automotive MLCCs with high lifetime reliability that can be used for comparative analysis of additive compositions through non-destructive test (I–V curve) with low evaluation time/cost.