Thin ceramic dielectrics combined with nickel electrodes

A capacitance/volume ratio of 3 μF/cm3 has been achieved in an encapsulated ceramic capacitor without the use of precious metal for the electrodes. A modified form of barium titanate which can be sintered in a reducing atmosphere to yield a high-resistivity dielectric has been developed as the dielectric. Capacitors are made by assembling plastic-bound layers of barium titanate, with layers of powdered nickel deposited between them, and firing to burn out the organic matter and to sinter the nickel electrodes and the dielectric material.The substitution of carefully selected low-permittivity material for the barium titanate leads to units in the 100–10000pF range with losses less than 0.001 and very low temperature coefficients.