Title : A very low temperature green processing for developing high dielectric Al2O3, SrTiO3 ceramic composites
Abstract:
Processing of ceramics and its composites either by conventional or advanced processing techniques necessitates very high sintering temperature (>1000oC) and moderate to long duration of time. On the other hand, the Cold Sintering Process (CSP) is a low temperature green technology proven a significant lowering in sintering temperature and time for a wide range of oxide ceramics. This energy-efficient method facilitates enhanced integration with different materials and even with polymers as well. The present work demonstrates the advantage of CSP in the processing of monolith ceramics (Al2O3, SrTiO3) at extremely low temperature of 300oC. Also Al2O3-(20-30 wt.%) HDPE composites are successfully processed at extremely low temperature of 120oC. High dielectric constant (ε’) of 11.73 and low dielectric loss (tanδ) of ~ 0.0076 observed for CSPed- Al2O3-20HDPE and a little low ε’ of 9.13 and low tanδ of 0.0066 was evident for Al2O3-30HDPE at 1MHz. Such dielectric behavior of Al2O3 composites are related to crystallite size, dangling bond density and decrease in microstrain. It was also observed that the dielectric constant of monolithic Al2O3 is around 90 at 20MHz. In case of SrTiO3, it was observed that the dielectric constant and loss decreased (up to 8MHz) from 275 and 0.75 to 118 and 0.05, respectively. This work reveals the advantage of cold sintering in densifying and enhancing dielectric properties of ceramics.