Sintering of LTCC
(2008)
Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic materials (LTCC) have attracted growing interest in recent years since they are promising candidates for highly integrated ceramic packaging. This paper surveys materials concepts of related glass ceramic composites (GCC) and discusses unsolved problems and challenges. The densification of GCC based on "viscous sintering" may be affected by steric effects and partial dissolution of dispersed crystal particles, crystallization and phase boundary reactions.
New applications of low-temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC), such as pressure sensors or integrated functional layers, require materials that possess higher coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE). To fabricate LTCC with elevated CTE, two methods of material design are examined: firstly, glass ceramic composites (GCC), which consist of >50 vol% glass in the starting powder, and, secondly, glass-bonded ceramics (GBC), where glass is added as a sintering aid only. The CTE of GBC is mainly determined by the crystalline component. For GCC, the CTE can be well predicted, if CTE and elastic data of each phase in the microstructure are known. A nonlinear characteristic of the CTE versus phase composition was found with increasing Ecrystals/Eglass ratio and absolute CTE difference between the components. The glass composition and glass amount can be used to compensate the fixed properties of a crystalline material in a desired way. However, because the CTE and permittivity of a glass cannot be chosen independently, an optimum glass composition has to be found. For a given LTCC, it is possible to control the devitrification by shifting the glass composition. In this way, the resulting CTE values can be predicted more exactly and tailoring becomes possible. Different LTCC materials, based on the crystalline compounds Ba(La,Nd)2Ti4O12, ZrO2 (Y-TZP), SiO2 (quartz), and specially developed glasses, possessing an elevated CTE of around 10 × 10-6 K-1 while showing permittivity εr between 6 and 63, are introduced.
Green compacts of ceramics, glass ceramic composites and sinter glass ceramics contain
different amounts of organic materials added as pressing aids or binders. Before sintering, these
organics have to burn out completely. In oxidising atmospheres, the debindering process is mostly
exothermic and therefore difficult to control. This uncontrolled heat production due to locally enhanced
debindering and respective gas release may cause damages in the green compact microstructure.
Therefore, debindering is usually operated with very low heating rates (< 3 K/min) which requires
long processing times of many hours. In this paper, we will show that it is possible to reduce
the processing time for debindering dramatically by using the decomposition rate of the organic
binder, detected by the weight loss of the sample, as a control factor of the furnace.