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Technical Capabilities:

 

Processing and Synthesis

 

Powder Processing. Many synthesis techniques are available to produce micron- to nano-sized particulates of complex chemistries. CDS faculty have a photo-Processingvast knowledge base in solid state calcination with size reduction through ball, vibratory, and attrition molding methods. Sol-gel, coprecipitation, and hydrothermal synthesis are also readily available. There is expertise in dispersion and dissolution. Software packages have been developed to determine both interparticular forces and equilibrium solution chemistry. CDS faculty have developed passivation and chemical coating methods for advance stoichiometry and mixing methods. CDS faculty and company members have access to the particulate characterization laboratory, which has facilities for zeta potential, size distributions, surface area, etc.


Thick film pastes and inks can be manufactured with a three-roll mill. Multilayer capabilities include tape casting, screen printing, and multilayer lamination. Thin/thick films ~0.1µm to 10 µm can be deposited by electrophoretic deposition in the CDS. Firing of hybrid microelectronic circuits can be done in production sized infrared or resistance heated belt furnace.


For sintering research, CDS has a computer-controlled furnace room with controlled atmosphere firing capabilities and a custom-designed fast fire furnace. A novel rate-controlled sintering system has been designed to establish densification conditions that minimize the transient sintering stresses. This has been successfully demonstrated for integrated passive components. To minimize damage in debinding multilayer structures, a smart binder burnout TGA system has been developed with controlled atmosphere and heating rates.


photo-thin film

 

Thin Film Facilities. Thin film deposition techniques include sol-gel, laser ablation, multilayer magnetron, multi-ion beam reaction sputtering, mist deposition, and molecular beam epitaxies. CDS faculty have experience in the deposition of a wide variety of compositions, including:

                      • BaTiO3
                      • (Ba,Sr)TiO3
                      • SrTiO3
                      • Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3
                      • Pb(Zr,Ti)O3
                      • PbZrO3, PbTiO3
                      • YBa2Cu3O7
                      • SrRuO3
                      • RuO2.