Abstract Latent defects were provoked in SMD capacitors by short TLP current pulses. Simultaneously the transient evolution of the device's charge was extracted to generate its Q(V) characteristics and to determine its capacitive behaviour during the transient current stress. We could alter the capacitors so that normal operation was influenced only slightly, but the dielectric breakdown behaviour was considerably changed, which would result in an endangered application. The proposed method can generate and analyse those latent defects simultaneously.