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This letter reports on in-situ characterization of the high temperature sintering of multilayer ceramic capacitors by high-resolution synchrotron x-ray imaging. Microstructural evolution was obtained in real time by a continuous recording of 2-dimensional radiographs. Anisotropic strains were measured for different layers. Quantification of defects was conducted with 3-dimensional nano-computed tomography. These in-situ observations prove that electrode discontinuities occur at the early stage of sintering and originate from initial heterogeneities linked to the particulate nature of the starting powders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synchrotron x-ray nano-tomography was used to characterize the microstructures of multi-layer ceramic capacitors before and after sintering. 3D microstructures of the same sample were reconstructed and quantitatively analyzed. The discontinuities observed in inner electrodes were found to originate from initial heterogeneities of nickel powders in the electrodes. They are supposed to grow due to the constraint of adjacent dielectric layers. Dielectric layers show anisotropic shrinkage with a decrease in density as function of layer position in the multilayer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]