Introduction to

Electroceramics
EBB 443
Seramik Teknikal

Ceramic Materials

Ceramic materials can now be broadly

considered to be all inorganic non-metallic
materials.
However, it is more useful to classify them as
polycrystalline non-metallic materials.
The inherent physical properties of ceramics has
made them desirable for use in wide range of
industries, with their first applications in the
electronics sector.

Introduction to Ceramics: Concept

Evolution of Materials and Ceramics

Pottery and Electroceramics

Electroceramics

What are electroceramics?

The term Electroceramic is used to describe ceramic materials

that have been specially formulated for specific electrical,
magnetic, or optical properties.
Their properties can be tailored to operation as insulators,
ferroelectric materials, highly conductive ceramics, electrodes as
well as sensors and actuators.
The performance of electroceramic materials and devices depends
on the
complex interplay between processing,
chemistry,
structure at many levels and
device physics.

What are electroceramics?

The applications of ceramics in the electronics

industry can be divided into two groups:

the use of materials for interconnection and packaging of

semiconductor circuits, and
the use of ceramics in circuit components which perform a
function in their own right, such as capacitors and sensors.

The former application forms a large market and has

been well reviewed elsewhere.
The latter is particularly interesting because the
materials which are used for a very wide range of
applications are in many cases closely related in
crystal structure.

Common Applications for

Electroceramics

Insulator
Resistor
High dielectric constant capacitors
Piezoelectric sonar transducers
Ultrasonic transducers
Radio & communication filters
Medical diagnostic transducers
Ultrasonic motors
Electro-optic light valves
Thin-film capacitors
Ferroelectric thin-film memories

Ceramic insulators

Bulk Ceramic Varistors

(VDR-voltage dependent
resistors)

Bulk Ceramic Thermistors

Bulk ceramic resistors

Cellular Telephone

Portable communication devices

such as cordless, portable, and
car telephone have become
popular worlwide.

Do you know what kind of

dielectric and ferroelectric
components are used in a
cellular phone?

Cellular Telephone

Chip Monolithic
ceramic capacitors
Microwave
Oscillators
Microwave Filters
Ceramic Resonators

High Frequency SAW

Filter
Ceramic Filters
Piezoelectric
Receivers
Piezoelectric
Speakers

Johanson
Dielectrics
Capacitor
Products:
Ceramic SMT and
Leaded High
Voltage and High
Temperature, Dual
and Multi
Capacitor Arrays,
Low Inductance,
X2Y, Switchmode.

Capacitors

Capacitors

Capacitors
C = "capacitance"
= q /V
Units: Coulomb/Volt
= Farad (F)
----------------------------The capacitance of a
capacitor is constant;
if q increases, V
increases proportionately.

Michael Faraday
(1791-1867)

A
C r o
d

AV
Q r o
d

Q = CV
Q: charge (Coulomb)
C: capacitance (Farad)
V: potential difference (Volt)
d: separation/thickness
(meter)

o: permitivity of vacuum =
8.854x10-12 C2/m2 or
F/m

r: dielectric constant

Dielectric Materials and Devices

Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor

The demands for miniaturization largely

preclude an increase in the face area A.
One exception is the multilayer ceramic
capacitor (MLCC), in which case:

A( N 1)
C r o
d

where N is the number of stacked plates.

Ideally, the dielectric should have a low
electrical conductivity so that the leakage
current is not too large.

Multilayer Ceramic
Capacitor

Cut-away view of multilayer

ceramic capacitor.

Surface-Mount Ceramic
Capacitors

Military electronics

Surface-Mount Capacitors

Ceramic surface-mount capacitors are used in

every type of electronic equipment including
computers, telecommunication, automotive
electronics, military electronics, medical
electronics and consumer electronics.
High voltage and high temperature ceramic
capacitors are serve military, aerospace, oil
service, oil exploration and other markets
including medical imaging, power generation,
and high voltage power supply.

Temperature Sensitive Resistor

There are
numerous uses
for resistors with
high valuea of
the temperature
coefficient of
resistance (TCR)
and they may be
negative (NTC)
or positive (PTC).

Voltage-dependent Resistors
(Varistors)

There are a number of situations in which it is valuable to have a

resistor which offers a high resistance at low voltages and a low
resistance at high voltages.
Such a devices can be used to protect a circuit from high-voltage
transients by providing a path across the power suply that
takes only a small current under normal conditions but takes
large current if the voltage rises abnormally,
thus preventing high-voltage pulses from reaching the circuit.
Schematic use of a VDR to protect a circuit against transients,

Source

VDR

Circuit to be
protected

Schematic representation of
varistor-capacitor device
construction and its
equivalent circuit.

High-K Dielectric Materials

The discovery of materials with unusually high-dielectric

constants (r > 2000-100000), and their ferroelectric nature,
led to an explosion in ceramic use.
The first employed in high-k capacitors is BaTiO3 based, and
later developed into

piezoelectric transducers,
positive temperature coefficient (PTC) devices, and
electro-optic light valves.

Recent developments in the field of ferroelectric ceramics is

their use in

medical ultrasonic composites,

high displacement piezoelectric actuators, and
photoresistors.

Piezoelectric

Piezoelectricity was discovered in 1880 by J & P Curie

during studies into the effect of pressure on the generation
of electrical charge by crystals (such as quartz).
Described as the generation of electricity as a result of
mechanical pressure, or
"electrical polarisation produced by mechanical strain
in crystals belonging to certain classes".
The phenomenon can be attributed to a lack of centre of
symmetry in the crystallographic unit cell - or the unit cell is
described as non-centrosymmetric.

Piezoelectric

For Piezoelectricity the effect is linear and reversible,

the magnitude of the polarisation is dependant
on the magnitude of the stress,
the sign of the charge produced is dependant on
the type of stress (tensile or compressive).

Piezoelectric Ceramics

Piezoelectric Microactuator
Devices

Schematic draw of optical scanning device

with double layered PZT layer (a) and the
fabricated device, (b) Mirror plate: 300300
(m2, DPZT beam: 800 230 m2).

Micropump using screen-printed PZT

actuator on silicon membrane. (Courtesy
of Neil White, Univ. of Southampton,
UK.)

Schematic drawing of self-actuation

cantilever with an integrated
piezoresistor.

Ferroelectric ceramics

This kind of material has perovskite structure, with

general formula ABO3, in which

A is a large divalent metal ion such as Pb2+ or Ba2+,

B is a small tetravalent metal ion, such as Ti4+ or Zr4+,
octahedrally coordinating with oxygen.

Ferroelectricity occurs due to the displacement of

positive ions B4+ and negative ions O2- in opposite
directions.

Ferroelectric Ceramics

This displacement causes spontaneous

polarisation which is the origin of many other
properties such as

extremely high dielectric constant,

hysteresis loop (non-linear dependence of polarisation with
applied field),
piezoelectricity (the ability to change the dimension with
applied field and to produce the current with applied
mechanical stress).

Ferroelectric ceramics: PZT

(PbZrTiO3) structure

Ferroelectric ceramics are widely used in

modern technology with various applications
(sensors, actuators, generators, transducers to
very recent IC for RAM).
They can be used for DRAM (dynamic random
access memory), and high remanent

polarisation and low coercive field for being

used as NVRAM (non-volatile random access
memory).

Examples of piezoelectric microsensors on silicon: (a) microphone

and (b) accelerometer. (OPA N.V., Taylor and Francis Ltd.)

Microwave Dielectrics

The Microwave materials including of dielectric and coaxial

resonators to meet the demands of microwave
applications for high performance, low cost devices in
small, medium and large quantities.
Applications
Patch antennas
Resonators/inductors
Substrates
C-band resonator-mobile
Filters

Photograph of split post dielectric resonators

operating at frequencies: 1.4, 3.2 and 33 GHz.

Jerzy Krupka, Journal of the European Ceramic Society 23 (2003) 26072610

EM Spectrum

Mobile phones operate in two main frequency ranges:

In

US - the older systems ~850 MHz & the newer ~1900

MHz.
In

European - near 900 MHz & 1800 MHz (GSM).

Magnetic Ceramics

There are various types of magnetic material

classified by their magnetic susceptibilities:
diamagnetic, paramagnetic and ferromagnetic.
Diamagnetic, have very small negative
susceptibilities (about 10-6).
Example: inert gases, hydrogen, many metals,
most non-metals and many organic compounds.
Paramagnetics are those materials in which
the atoms have a permanent magnetic moment
arising from spinning and orbiting electrons.
The susceptibilities are therefore positive but
again small (in range 10-3 10-6).

Transformer

Magnetic Ceramics- cont.

Ferromagnetic materials are spontaneously

magnetized below the Curie point.
The spontaneous magnetization is not apparent
in materials which have not been exposed to an
external field because of the formation of small
volumes (domains) of materials each having its
own direction of magnetization.
Spontaneous magnetization is due to the
alignment of uncompensated electron spin by
the strong quantum mechanical exchange
forces.

Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR)

The GMR is the change in electrical resistance of some

materials in response to an applied magnetic field.
GMR effect was discovered in 1988 by two European
scientists working independently:

Peter Gruenberg of the KFA research institute in Julich, Germany, and

Albert Fert of the University of Paris-Sud .

They saw very large resistance changes - 6 percent and 50

percent, respectively - in materials comprised of alternating
very thin layers of various metallic elements.
These experiments were performed at low temperatures and
in the presence of very high magnetic fields.

Intrinsic
Magnetoresistance

SrRuO3
Tl2Mn2O7

CrO2

La0.7(Ca1-ySry)0.3MnO3

Fe3O4

CaCu3Mn4O12 (CCMO)

Applications of GMR

The largest technological application of GMR is in

the data storage industry.
IBM were first to market with hard disks based on
GMR technology although today all disk drives
make use of this technology.
On-chip GMR sensors are available commercially
from Non-Volatile Electronics.
Other applications are as diverse as solid-state
compasses, automotive sensors, non-volatile
magnetic memory and the detection of
landmines.

Applications of GMR

Read sensors that employ the GMR effect available for

detecting the fields from tiny regions of magnetization.
These tiny sensors can be made in such a way that a very
small magnetic field causes a detectable change in their
resistivity; such changes in the resistivity produce electrical
signals corresponding to the data on the disk.
It is expected that the GMR effect will allow disk drive
manufacturers to continue increasing density at least until
disk capacity reaches 10 Gb per square inch.
At this density, 120 billion bits could be stored on a typical
3.5-inch disk drive, or the equivalent of about a thousand
30-volume encyclopedias.