Characterization of Multilayered Ceramic Capacitors via Piezoelectric Force Microscopy

The coupling between an electrical and mechanical response in a material is a fundamental property that provides functionality to a variety of applications ranging from sensors and actuators to energy harvesting and biology. Most materials exhibit electromechanical coupling in nanometer-sized domains. Therefore, to understand the relationship between structure and function of these materials, characterization on the nanoscale is required. This property can be directly measured in a non-destructive manner using piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM), a mode that comes standard in all atomic force microscopes (AFMs) from Park Systems. Additionally, PFM can be used as a spectroscopic tool to evaluate switching of piezoelectric domains. Here we demonstrate the utility of PFM for failure analysis of a multilayered ceramic capacitor. Correlative imaging of topography and electrical signals revealed discontinuous structures in the device that likely had a direct effect on device performance. Spectroscopy was also performed at a specific piezoelectric region to measure domain properties, such as the electric field required to flip the polarization direction (coercive voltage).