I’d say that’s a version of a soft termination capacitor. They are used when there’s risk the board is flexed or exposed to mechanical or thermal shocks to prevent cracks in the capacitor (causing it to fail short).
They are called soft termination, I’m not sure if that’s available for every component, it came to my attention on ceramic caps. It’s a dedicated feature you can filter components e.g. on Digikey.
… I’m sorry to say that was a joke, because well, capacitors like to go boom (MLCCs as in here not so much, but still).
What I do know though is that these MLCCs often dramatically change their actual capacitance with temperature, so maybe this is a sort of “temperature isolation” to keep the capacitor more stable? Honestly, no idea though.
Add comment