Thermal oxide electrical properties

Highly pure lanthanum oxide is used to make optical glass of high refractive index for camera lenses. It also is used to make glass fibers. The oxide also is used to improve thermal and electrical properties of barium and strontium titanates. Other applications are in glass polishes carbon arc electrodes fluorescent type phosphors and as a diluent for nuclear fuels. In such apph-cations, lanthinum oxide is usually combined with other rare earth oxides. 

Aluminum oxide, AljOj, commonly referred to as alumina, is by far the most common substrate material used in the microelectronics industry because it is superior to most other oxide ceramics in mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. The raw materials are plentiful, low in cost, and amenable to fabrication by a wide variety of techniques into a wide variety of shapes. 

Salavagione, H.J., Martinez, G., Gomez, M.A., 2009. Synthesis of poly(vinyl alcohol)/reduced graphite oxide nanocomposites with improved thermal and electrical properties. Journal of Materials Chemistry 19, 5027. 

PPQs possess a stepladder stmcture that combines good thermal stabiUty, electrical insulation, and chemical resistance with good processing characteristics (81). These properties allow unique appHcations in the aerospace and electronics industries (82,83). PPQ can be made conductive by the use of an electrochemical oxidation method (84). The conductivities of these films vary from 10 to 10 S/cm depending on the dopant anions, thus finding appHcations in electronics industry. Similarly, some thermally stable PQs with low dielectric constants have been produced for microelectronic appHcations (85). Thin films of PQs have been used in nonlinear optical appHcations (86,87). 

Alloy selection depends on several factors, including electrical properties, alloy melting range, wetting characteristics, resistance to oxidation, mechanical and thermomechanical properties, formation of intermetaUics, and ionic migration characteristics (26). These properties determine whether a particular solder joint can meet the mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrical demands placed on it. 

We shall briefly discuss the electrical properties of the metal oxides. Thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, the Seebeck effect, and the Hall effect are some of the electron transport properties of solids that characterize the nature of the charge carriers. On the basis of electrical properties, the solid materials may be classified into metals, semiconductors, and insulators as shown in Figure 2.1. The range of electronic structures of oxides is very wide and hence they can be classified into two categories, nontransition metal oxides and transition metal oxides. In nontransition metal oxides, the cation valence orbitals are of s or p type, whereas the cation valence orbitals are of d type in transition metal oxides. A useful starting point in describing the structures of the metal oxides is the ionic model.5 Ionic crystals are formed between highly electropositive... 

Anodic oxidation is a very common process in the electrochemical industry, used for example in the manufacture of aluminum and tantalum capacitors. The anodic oxidation of silicon is not of comparable importance, because the electrical properties of anodic oxides are inferior to those of thermal oxides. 

While the growth of thermal oxides is dominated by high-temperature diffusion of oxygen in the oxide matrix, anodic oxide growth is dominated by field-enhanced hydroxyl diffusion at RT. These different growth mechanisms result in pronounced differences in the morphological, chemical and electrical properties of the oxide. 

The electrical properties of an anodic oxide are found to depend on the formation conditions and subsequent treatments such as annealing. As-prepared anodic oxides show high leakage currents and a diode-like behavior known from anodic oxides of valve metals. A short high-temperature anneal, which removes the bound hydroxyl, reduces the leakage current to values typical of thermal oxides, as shown in Fig. 5.9. 

Polysiloxanes, also called silicones, are characterized by combinations of chemical, mechanical, and electrical properties which taken together are not common to any other commercially available class of polymers. They exhibit relatively high thermal and oxidative stability, low power loss, high dielectric strength, and unique rheological properties, and are relatively inert to most of the ionic reagents. Almost all of the commercially utilized siloxanes are based on polydimethylsiloxane with trimethylsiloxy end groups. They have the widest use... 

The fabrication process of vanadium oxide (VO2) has also been studied using RBS/C. Since optieal and electrical properties of VO2 are dramatically changed at 68°C due to phase transition, VO2 is regarded as one of the candidates for thermally activated electronic or optical switching devices for optieal fibers or sensors. To obtain the desired properties, the development of the fabrication process for very thin films, without crystalline defects on various substrates, is required. Single-crystalline VO2 thin films on (0001) plane of a sapphire substrate have been synthesized by a laser ablation method. The quality of VO2 was examined by X-ray diffraction and RBS/C method. The eleetrieal resistanee and the optical transmittance of the VO2 film were measured under inereasing and deereasing temperatures. At a temperature of 68 °C, an abrupt transition of resistanee from metal to... 

Surface layers of silicon oxide are important in semiconductor device fabrication as interlayer dielectrics for capacitors, isolation of conducting layers, or as masking materials. However, anodic oxides, due to their relatively poor electrical properties, breakdown voltage, and leakage current, have not yet found much use in device technology, and cannot compete with thermal oxides obtained at high temperatures of 700 to 900 °C. 

One final note is appropriate for this section. Dne to the fact that many oxide ceramics are used as insulating materials, the term thermal resistivity is often used instead of thermal conductivity. As will be the case with electrical properties in Chapter 6, resistivity and conductivity are merely inverses of one another, and the appropriateness of one or the other is determined by the context in which it is used. Similarly, thermal conductance is often used to describe the thermal conductivity of materials with standard thicknesses (e.g., building materials). Thermal condnctance is the thermal conductivity divided by the thickness (C = k/L), and thermal resistance is the inverse of the prodnct of thermal conductance and area R = 1/C A). 

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