TDK's soft termination series is designed for use in applications where significant board flex may occur - especially in safety or high reliability designs. Safety-critical automotive applications such as ABS, ESP, airbag and battery line applications are common examples. Conventional termination materials used in standard MLCCs are inflexible; therefore vibration, shock, or thermal expansion and contraction have the potential to crack or shear the solder joint between the component and the circuit board. In automotive applications, which are exposed to shock and vibration and to extreme temperature swings, this can result in higher failure rates in the field for conventional capacitors. TDK’s new soft termination provides very high resistance to mechanical and thermal stress to ensure the component can meet the requirements of automotive OEMs.