Patent ID: 9390855
Filing Date: 2016-07-12
CPC Classification: G01N,H01G

Claim Text:
1. A monolithic ceramic capacitor comprising: a ceramic body including: outer electrodes arranged on external surfaces of the ceramic body and electrically connected to respective ones of the inner electrodes; wherein each of the dielectric ceramic layers contains, as its main component, a perovskite compound containing Ba and Ti and further contains at least one of Mn, Mg, and Si; a portion of an electrically effective section of the dielectric ceramic layers sandwiched between the inner electrodes is observed with a transmission electron microscope (TEM) and subjected to mapping analysis by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), the portion being located in an area at or near a connecting portion between the inner electrodes and a corresponding one of the outer electrodes; and in regions of a resulting mapping image obtained by the mapping analysis and a resulting TEM transmission image, the regions extending from interfaces between the inner electrodes and a corresponding one of the dielectric ceramic layers to positions about ⅓ of a thickness of a corresponding one of the dielectric ceramic layers in the stacking direction, a relationship ((L2−L3)/L1)×100≧50 is satisfied, where L1 represents a total length of ceramic grain boundaries detected from the TEM transmission image obtained by the TEM observation, L2 represents a total length of grain boundaries where a rare-earth element is present, the grain boundaries being detected from a mapping image obtained by the mapping analysis and the TEM transmission image; and L3 represents a total length of portions where the grain boundaries where the rare-earth element is present are overlapped with grain boundaries where at least one of Mn, Mg, and Si is present, the grain boundaries being detected from the mapping image obtained by the mapping analysis and the TEM transmission image.