5 Werkstofftechnik
Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
- 2020 (2)
Dokumenttyp
Sprache
- Englisch (2)
Schlagworte
- LTCC (2) (entfernen)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
- 5 Werkstofftechnik (2) (entfernen)
The wireless high-frequency technology requires a robust, cost-effective, and highly integrated substrate technology offering the capability for areas of tailored permittivity. The wet-chemical porosification of low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) substrates offers such an approach by locally embedding air. Porosification of LTCC in both extremely acidic and alkaline media has been investigated in previous works. However, for improving the available knowledge on the porosification of LTCC with H3PO4 as a standard and a widely used etching solution, the impact of solution concentration was systematically investigated and a substantial improvement in the etching performance was achieved. Moreover, in the present study, for the first time, the intermediate pH values, and the impact of pH as a key parameter on the etching process have been investigated. For this purpose, the applicability of phosphate buffer solution (PBS) as a prospective novel etchant mixture for the porosification of a commercially available LTCC tape (Ceramtape GC) was explored. Valuable information about surface morphology, crystalline composition, and the pore structure of the etched LTCCs was gathered employing scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, and mercury porosimetry measurements. Based on these findings, the performance of PBS-based etchant systems towards the generation of porous LTCCs combining high depths of porosification with acceptable surface characteristics for subsequent metallization is demonstrated. Based on the obtained results, by application of a 0.2 mol L−1 solution of PBS, the effective relative permittivity of test samples with a thickness of approximately 600 µm and a porosification depth of 186 µm from each side, could be reduced up to 10% of its initial “as fired” value. Also, based on the measurement results and by measuring the depth of porosification, the permittivity of the etched layer was estimated to show a reduction of up to 22% compared to the initial “as fired” value.
The 5G technology promises real time data transmission for industrial processes, autonomous driving, virtual and augmented reality, E-health applications and many more. The Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics (LTCC) technology is well suited for the manufacturing of microelectronic components for such applications. Still, improvement of the technology such as further miniaturization is required. This study focuses on the characterization of inner metallization of LTCC multilayer modules, especially on the vertical interconnect access (VIA). Critical considerations for this characterization are delamination, pore clustering in and at the edge of the VIA, deformation, and stacking offset. A LTCC multilayer consisting of a glassy crystalline matrix with silver based VIAs was investigated by synchrotron x-ray tomography (CT). The aim of this study is to propose a multitude of structural characteristic values to maximize the information gained from the available dataset. Data analysis has been done with the open source software ImageJ as well as several additional plugins. The high-resolution CT data was evaluated through 2D slices for accessibility reasons. The segmentation of all 2000 slices to assess the different regions e.g. pores, silver and glass ceramic was done by a supervised machine learning algorithm. A quantitative evaluation of shape, deformation, and porosity of the VIA with respect to its dimensions is presented and the suitability of the characterization approach is assessed.