Murata has introduces fail safe ceramic capacitor for automotive applications
Called the GCE series, there are two reliability-enhancing features:
The first is a conductive resin soft internal termination for the capacitive element which helps to decouple mechanical stress due to PCB flexing and temperature variations.
Secondly, there is a floating internal terminal that means the device is effectively two capacitors in series.
"In this way, a short circuit condition is highly unlikely to happen due to component failure," said the firm.
The GCE series is available in 0603 and 0805 sizes, covering nominal working voltages from 50 to 100V, with values of 10, 22, 47 and 100nF.