Nonlinear acoustic effects in multilayer ceramic capacitors

Nonlinear resonant acoustics was explored as an approach for nondestructively evaluating the susceptibility of BaTiO3-based multilayer ceramic capacitors to electrical failure during service. The acoustic nonlinearity was characterized through measurements of the dependence of the frequency of a selected dominant mode near 1.16 MHz on driving amplitude, employing direct ferroelectric tone-burst transduction, time-domain signal acquisition, and frequency-domain spectral analysis. Finite-element modeling and consideration of the symmetry of the excitation led to identification of the selected mode as the lowest-order extensional mode. Measurements as a function of the number of thermal treatments (of two types) provided evidence for increases in acoustic nonlinearity arising from thermal-stress-induced material damage. No evidence for further systematic changes in nonlinearity was found after nine heat treatments. Signals and analysis for some samples were complicated by the emergence of a second resonance ...