In order to gain an understanding of highly reliable electrical charac
teristics for the He-doped multilayer ceramic capacitors with Ni elect
rodes, dielectric properties of various rare-earth-oxide-doped BaTiO3
ceramics were studied. The smaller ionic radius rare-earth-oxide (Dy,
Ho, Er)-doped samples showed lower resistivity in reducing atmosphere,
but higher resistivity in oxidizing atmosphere at the cooling stage,
compared with the larger-ion (La, Sm, Gd)-doped samples. Multilayer ce
ramic capacitors with Ni electrodes using the smaller-ion-doped materi
als showed smaller aging rate and longer lifetime. We developed Ni-ele
ctrode MLCs with X7R specification as 1 mu F in the 2125 type.