NTC (negative temperature coefficient) thermistors are semiconductor ceramics whose resistance decreases with increasing temperature, making them essential components in various temperature sensing applications. Typically, ceramic materials are sintered at high temperatures exceeding 1,150°C. However, in laminated devices incorporating internal electrodes, co-sintering can lead to cracking and mechanical failure due to mismatches in the thermal expansion coefficients between the ceramic layers and metal-based electrodes. Moreover, the use of noble metal electrodes increases production costs. To address these challenges, a low-temperature sintering approach is required. Previous studies have demonstrated that incorporating glass frit can reduce the sintering temperature of ceramics, although this often results in increased electrical resistance. In this study, NiMnCoO₄ (NMC) ceramics, as a representative NTC thermistor composition, were prepared with the addition of 10 wt% glass frit. To mitigate the resulting increase in resistivity, trace amounts (1 wt%) of various metal oxides, including CuO, ZnO, and MnO, were introduced. Among these, the addition of CuO notably decreased both the resistivity and B constant values. In contrast, MnO had little effect on resistivity, while ZnO led to an increase. With respect to the B25/85 constant, samples containing MnO and ZnO exhibited higher values than those without metal oxide additives. These findings indicate that the incorporation of 1 wt% CuO is effective in reducing the increased resistivity in NMC ceramics subjected to low-temperature sintering via glass frit addition.
Dielectric ceramic capacitors present high output power density due to the fast energy charge and discharge nature of dielectric polarization. By forming dense ceramic films with nano-grains through the Aerosol Deposition (AD) process, dielectric ceramic capacitors can have high dielectric breakdown strength, high energy storage density, and leading to high power density. Dielectric capacitors fabricated by AD process are expected to meet the increasing demand in applications that require not only high energy density but also high power output in a short time. This article reviews the recent progress on the dielectric ceramic capacitors with improved energy storage properties through AD process, including energy storage capacitors based on both leadbased and lead-free dielectric ceramics.
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In this study, we introduce a Na β″-alumina composite thick film as a solid electrolyte, to reduce the resistance of electrolyte for a Na/S battery. An alumina/zirconia composite material was used to enhance the mechanical properties of the electrolyte. A solid electrolyte of about 40 μm thick was successfully fabricated through the conversion and tape-casting methods. In order to investigate the effect of the surface treatment process of the solid electrolyte on the battery performance, the electrolyte was polished by dry and wet processes, respectively, and then the Na/S batteries were prepared for analyzing the battery characteristics. The battery with the dry process performed much better than the battery made with the wet process. As a result, the battery manufactured by the dry process showed excellent performance. Therefore, it is confirmed that the surface treatment process of the solid electrolyte has an important effect on the battery capacity and coulombic efficiency, as well as the interface reaction.
We investigated the structure of an ultra-thin insulating board with low thermal conductivity along z-axis, which was based on the idea of void layers created during the glass infiltration process for the zero-shrinkage low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology. An alumina and four glass powders were chosen and prepared as green sheets by the tape casting method. After comparison of the four glass powders, bismuth glass was selected for the experiment. Since there is no notable reactivity between alumina and bismuth glass, alumina was selected as the supporting additive in glass layers. With 2.5 vol% of alumina powder, glass green sheets were prepared and stacked alternately with alumina green sheet to form the ‘alumina/glass (including alumina additive)/alumina’ structure. The stacked green sheets were sintered into an insulating substrate. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the additive alumina formed supporting bridges in void layers. The depth and number of the stacking layers were varied to examine the insulating property. The lowest thermal conductivity obtained was 0.23 W/mK with a 500-㎛-thick substrate.
Induction cooktop has a great attention due to its safety, quick heating and cleanness compared to gas oven. However, the materials for induction cookware is limited to steel or stainless-steel which has the magnetic property. Recently, it has been tried to apply various porcelain to induction cookware after printing the silver layer on the bottom of cookware plates and co-firing at high temperature. Glass frits are added in the silver paste to improve an adhesion force between porcelain materials containers and transferred silver layer. The hybrid silver pastes for induction cookware requires the proper electrical resistance and the thermal conductivity with base plates. After sintering process at 800℃, a part of melted glass migrated to the porcelain and the rest of the glass frit was exposed to the surface. It was confirmed that most of the glass frit formed an adhesion layer between the porcelain and transferred silver layer that enhances the adhesion force.
Convectional PZT based piezoelectric ceramics have to sinter at high temperature about 1,200℃ for their suitable electrical properties. However, some issues: low temperature sintering piezoelectric ceramic composition and reliable internal electrode, have recently attracted a great deal of interest as a highly efficient multi-layered piezoelectric ceramics. In order to optimize low temperature sintering conditions of thick-film PMN-PZ-PT ceramic, it was investigated sintering and piezoelectric properties according to the change of LiBiO2contents. Thus, the superior piezoelectric properties were found at the pallet type PMN-PZ-PT optimized with low sintering processing at 925℃ including 7 wt% LiBiO2sintering aid. Consequentially, we successfully manufactured thick-film PMN-PZ-PT ceramics, which had superior piezoelectric and dielectric properties, with 5 wt% of LiBiO2sintering aid at temperature of 900℃.
With high integration of electronic components, power inductors are also miniaturized. Recently, thick film processes for small size power inductors were developed and commercialized. However, the thick film process to prepare soft magnetic green sheets was not reported enough. In this study, we used Fe-Si magnetic and CIP (carbonyl iron powders) as starting materials to lead to a bimodal particle size distribution in the sheet. We proposed a newly developed ‘Modified slurry preparation process’ to get well dispersed condition even at high solid contents. Using the new process, it was possible to prepare a well dispersed slurry over 70 vol% of solid. BYK-103 was better than BYK-111 as dispersant in this slurry and the optimum amount was 0.6 wt%. The optimized slurry was formed into a sheet by tape casting process and then the sheet was laminated. We conformed that small size powder, large size powder, and epoxy resin were well dispersed in the green sheet.
Glass ceramic has a high mechanical strength and low sintering temperature. So, it can beused as a thick film substrate or a high strength insulator. A series of glass ceramic samples based onMgO-Al2O3-SiO2-ZrO2 (MASZ) were prepared by melting at 1,600℃, roll-quenching and heat treatment atvarious temperatures from 900℃ to 1,400℃. Dependent on the heat treatment temperature used, glassceramics with different crystal phases were obtained. Their nucleation behavior, microstructure andmechanical properties were investigated with differential thermal analysis (DTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD),scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Vicker`s hardness testing machine. With increasing the heattreatment temperature of MASZ samples, their hardness and toughness initially increase and then reachthe maximum points at 1,300℃, and begin to decrease at above this temperature, which is likely to bedue to the softening of glass ceramics. As the content of ZrO2 in MAS glass ceramics increases from 7.0wt.% to 13 wt.%, Vicker`s hardness and fracture toughness increase from 853 Kg/mm2 to 878 Kg/mm2and 1.6 MPa??m1/2 to 2.4 MPa??m1/2 respectively, which seems to be related with the nucleation of elongatedphases like fiber.
Room temperature powder spray in vacuum process, so called Aerosol deposition (AD) is a room temperature (RT) process to fabricate thick and dense ceramic films, based on collision of solid ceramic particles. This technique can provide crack-free dense thin and thick films with thicknesses ranging from sub micrometer to several hundred micrometers with very fast deposition rates at RT. In addition, this technique is using solid particles to form the ceramic films at RT, thus there is few limitation of the substrate and easy to control the compositions of the films. In this article, we review the progress made in synthesis of piezoelectric thin/thick films, multi-layer structures, NTC thermistor thin/thick films, oxide electrode thin films for actuators or sensor applications by AD at Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS) during the last 4 years.
Perovskite niobates and tantalates have been placed on a short list of functional materials for future technologies. This article was investigated ferroelectric materials Ag(Ta,Nb)O3 thick film. In this study, we have fabricated the Ag(Ta,Nb)O3 thick film on the Al2O3 substrates by screen printing method. The Ag(Ta,Nb)O3 thick film were fabricated by the mixed oxide method. The sintering temperature and time were 1,150℃, 2 hr. The electrical properties of Ag(Ta,Nb)O3 thick film were investigated at 30∼100℃.
As a II-IV compound semiconductor, ZnO has a wide band gap of 3.37 eV with transparent properties. Due to this transparent properties, ZnO materials can be also employed as the transparent conducting electrode materials. Recently, rapid progress has been made in the field of DSSC (dye sensitized solar cell)area. Therefore, strong demands have been required for the transparent electrodes with low temperature processing and cheap cost. In this paper, we will prepare ZnO thick films on the PET substrates for the electrode applications. We will investigate the structural and microstructure properties through the XRD, and SEM analysis, respectively. Also, we will study the electrical of specimens to apply the conducting electrode.
CuO doped WO3-SnO2 thick film gas sensors were fabricated by screen printing method on alumina substrates and heat-treated at 350℃ in air. The effects of mixing ratio of WO3 with SnO2 on the structural and morphological properties of WO3-SnO2 were investigated X-ray diffraction and Scanning Electron Microscope. The structural properties of the WO3-SnO2:CuO thick film by XRD showed that the monoclinic of WO3 and the tetragonal of SnO2 phase were mixed. Nano CuO was coated on the WO3-SnO2 surface and then the surface of WO3 was coated with SnO2 particles with 1~1.5 μm in diameters, as confirmed form the SEM image. The sensitivity of the WO3-SnO2:CuO sensor to 2000 ppm CO2 gas and 50 ppm H2S gas for the various ratio of WO3 and SnO2 was investigated. The 4 wt% CuO doped WO3-SnO2(75:25) tkick films showed the highest sensitivity to CO2 gas and H2S gas.
A Study of The Surface Dielectric Barrier Discharge Design Conditions for Generating Negative Air Ions Sang-Moon Shin, Jung-Yoon Kim, Jong-Soo Kim, Jae-Ha Choi, Won-Ho Choi Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers.2014; 28(1): 114. CrossRef