Facilities:

3. Thick Film Prototyping

The basis of our thick film laboratory is to take new materials and incorporate them into prototype devices to better access the performance. Traditional thick film methods are utilized, together with new technological development of methods such as electrophoretic deposition.

Thick film inks and pastes can be manufactured with an automatic mortar and pestle or three-roll mill. Ink and pastes can be printed using a production quality AMI screen printer and fired in a production-sized, atmosphere-controlled, infrared belt furnace. Low temperature cofired ceramic tape can be cast, machined on a Schneider and Marquard microhole punch, printed, and then laminated to create multilayer capacitors.

The electrophoretic deposition methods are being explored for ultrathin tapes. A method has been developed that enables tapes to be formed by electrophoretic deposition and then laminated into structures.

Devices that are presently being manufactured include multilayer capacitors, varistors, inductors, various integrated devices such as multilayer varistors capacitors, Z-chips, and low and broad pass RF-filters.

W.M. Keck Smart Materials Integration Laboratory

Contact: Amanda Baker, Validate to view contact info , (814) 863-9885