capacitor dielectric and piezoelectric ceramics

▪ ceramics

Introduction

      advanced industrial materials that, by virtue of their poor electrical conductivity, are useful in the production of electrical storage or generating devices.

      Capacitors (capacitor) are devices that store electric energy in the form of an electric field generated in the space between two separated, oppositely charged electrodes. Their capacity to store energy makes them essential components in many electric circuits, and that capacity can be greatly increased by inserting a solid dielectric material into the space separating the electrodes. Dielectrics are materials that are poor conductors of electricity. The nonconducting properties of ceramics are well known, and some ceramics are made into extremely effective dielectrics. Indeed, more than 90 percent of all capacitors are produced with ceramic materials serving as the dielectric.

      Piezoelectrics are materials that generate a voltage when they are subjected to mechanical pressure; conversely, when subjected to an electromagnetic field, they exhibit a change in dimension. Many piezoelectric devices are made of the same ceramic materials as capacitor dielectrics.

      This article describes the properties of the most prominent dielectric and piezoelectric ceramics and surveys their practical applications.

Ferroelectric properties of barium titanate

      The phenomenon of electric capacitance is described in some detail in electricity: Electrostatics: Capacitance (electricity). In that article it is explained that low electric conductivity is a factor of the chemical bonds that form a material. In dielectrics, unlike in conductive materials such as metals, the strong ionic and covalent bonds holding the atoms together do not leave electrons free to travel through the material under the influence of an electric (electric polarization) field. Instead, the material becomes electrically polarized, its internal positive and negative charges separating somewhat and aligning parallel to the axis of the electric field. When employed in a capacitor, this polarization acts to reduce the strength of the electric field maintained between the electrodes, which in turn raises the amount of charge that can be stored.

 Most ceramic capacitor dielectrics are made of barium titanate (BaTiO₃) and related perovskite compounds. As is pointed out in the article ceramic composition and properties, perovskite ceramics have a face-centred cubic (fcc) crystal structure. In the case of BaTiO₃, at high temperatures (above approximately 120° C, or 250° F) the crystal structure consists of a tetravalent titanium ion (Ti⁴⁺) sitting at the centre of a cube with the oxygen ions (O²⁻) on the faces and the divalent barium ions (Ba²⁺) at the corners. Below 120° C, however, a transition occurs. As is shown in Figure 1—>, the Ba²⁺ and O²⁻ ions shift from their cubic positions, and the Ti⁴⁺ ion shifts away from the cube centre. A permanent dipole results, and the symmetry of the atomic structure is no longer cubic (all axes identical) but rather tetragonal (the vertical axis different from the two horizontal axes). There is a permanent concentration of positive and negative charges toward opposite poles of the vertical axis. This spontaneous polarization is known as ferroelectricity; the temperature below which the polarity is exhibited is called the Curie point. Ferroelectricity is the key to the utility of BaTiO₃ as a dielectric material.

      Within local regions of a crystal or grain that is made up of these polarized structures, all the dipoles line up in what is referred to as a domain, but, with the crystalline material consisting of a multitude of randomly oriented domains, there is overall cancellation of the polarization. However, with the application of an electric field, as in a capacitor, the boundaries between adjacent domains can move, so that domains aligned with the field grow at the expense of out-of-alignment domains, thus producing large net polarizations. The susceptibility of these materials to electric polarization is directly related to their capacitance, or capacity to store electric charge. The capacitance of a specific dielectric material is given a measure known as the dielectric constant, which is essentially the ratio between the capacitance of that material and the capacitance of a vacuum. In the case of the perovskite ceramics, dielectric constants can be enormous—in the range of 1,000–5,000 for pure BaTiO₃ and up to 50,000 if the Ti⁴⁺ ion is replaced by zirconium (Zr⁴⁺).

      Chemical substitutions in the BaTiO₃ structure can alter a number of ferroelectric properties. For example, BaTiO₃ exhibits a large peak in dielectric constant near the Curie point—a property that is undesirable for stable capacitor applications. This problem may be addressed by the substitution of lead (Pb²⁺) for Ba²⁺, which increases the Curie point; by the substitution of strontium (Sr²⁺), which lowers the Curie point; or by substituting Ba²⁺ with calcium (Ca²⁺), which broadens the temperature range at which the peak occurs.

Disk, multilayer, and tubular capacitors

      Barium titanate can be produced by mixing and firing barium carbonate and titanium dioxide, but liquid-mix techniques are increasingly used in order to achieve better mixing, precise control of the barium-titanium ratio, high purity, and submicrometre particle size. Processing of the resulting powder varies according to whether the capacitor is to be of the disk or multilayer type. Disks are dry-pressed or punched from tape and then fired at temperatures between 1,250° and 1,350° C (2,280° and 2,460° F). Silver-paste screen-printed electrodes are bonded to the surfaces at 750° C (1,380° F). Leads are soldered to the electrodes, and the disks are epoxy-coated or wax-impregnated for encapsulation.

 The capacitance of ceramic disk capacitors can be increased by using thinner capacitors; unfortunately, fragility results. Multilayer capacitors (MLCs) overcome this problem by interleaving dielectric and electrode layers (see Figure 2—>). The electrode layers are usually palladium or a palladium-silver alloy. These metals have a melting point that is higher than the sintering temperature of the ceramic, allowing the two materials to be cofired. By connecting alternate layers in parallel, large capacitances can be realized with the MLC. The dielectric layers are processed by tape casting or doctor blading and then drying. Layer thicknesses as small as 5 micrometres (0.00022 inch) have been achieved. Finished “builds” of dielectric and electrode layers are then diced into cubes and cofired. MLCs have the advantages of small size, low cost, and good performance at high frequencies, and they are suitable for surface mounting on circuit boards. They are increasingly used in place of disk capacitors in most electronic circuitry. Where monolithic units are still employed, tubular capacitors are often used in place of disks, because the axial wire lead configuration of tubular capacitors is preferred over the radial configuration of disk capacitors for automatic circuit-board insertion machines.

      As is noted above, barium titanate-based MLCs usually require firing temperatures in excess of 1,250° C. To facilitate cofiring with electrode alloys of lower melting temperatures, the sintering temperature of the ceramic can be reduced to the neighbourhood of 1,100° C (2,000° F) by adding low-melting glasses or fluxing agents. In order to reduce the costs associated with precious-metal electrodes such as palladium and silver, ceramic compositions have been developed that can be cofired with less expensive nickel or copper at lower temperatures.

Barrier-layer capacitors

      Two other strategies to produce ceramic materials with high dielectric constants involve surface barrier layers or grain-boundary barrier layers; these are referred to as barrier-layer (BL) capacitors. In each case conductive films or grain cores are formed by donor doping or reduction firing of the ceramic. The surface or grain boundaries are then oxidized to produce thin resistive layers. In surface BL capacitors oxidation is accomplished by adding oxidizing agents such as manganese oxide or copper oxide to the silver electrode paste prior to firing. In grain-boundary BL capacitors slow cooling in air or oxygen allows oxygen to diffuse into the grain boundaries and reoxidize thin layers adjacent to the boundaries. Oxidizing agents such as bismuth and copper oxides also can be incorporated into the electrode paste to diffuse along grain boundaries during firing. In either case very high apparent dielectric constants, 50,000 to 100,000, can be obtained. Care must be taken in using BL capacitors, however, as they have very low dielectric breakdown strengths. Dielectric breakdown involves sudden failure of and catastrophic discharge through the dielectric material, with usually irreversible damage to the ceramic. In BL capacitors the barriers are so thin that local fields can be quite intense.

Random-access memories

      An extremely important application of thin-film ferroelectrics is in random-access memories (RAMs) for computers. Because of their larger dielectric constants, titanate-based ferroelectrics can achieve higher bit densities than silica-based semiconductors when used as thin-film capacitors in dynamic random-access memories (DRAMs). They also can be used as ferroelectric random-access memories (FERAMs), where the opposing directions of polarization can represent the two states of binary logic. Unlike conventional semiconductor RAM, the information stored in FERAMs is nonvolatile; i.e., it is retained when the power is turned off.

Piezoelectric ceramics

      Many of the ferroelectric perovskite materials described above are also piezoelectric; that is, they generate a voltage when stressed or, conversely, develop a strain when under an applied electromagnetic field. These effects result from relative displacements of the ions, rotations of the dipoles, and redistributions of electrons within the unit cell. Only certain crystal structures are piezoelectric. They are those which, like BaTiO₃, lack what is known as an inversion centre, or centre of symmetry—that is, a centre point from which the structure is virtually identical in any two opposite directions. In the case of BaTiO₃, the centre of symmetry is lost owing to the transition from a cubic to a tetragonal structure, which shifts the Ti⁴⁺ ion away from the central position that it occupies in the cube. Quartz is a naturally occurring crystal that lacks a centre of symmetry and whose piezoelectric properties are well known. Among the polycrystalline ceramics that display piezoelectricity, the most important are PZT (lead zirconate titanate, Pb[Zr,Ti]O₂) and PMN (lead magnesium niobate, Pb[Mg_1/3Nb_2/3]O₃). These materials are processed in a similar manner to capacitor dielectrics except that they are subjected to poling, a technique of cooling the fired ceramic piece through the Curie point under the influence of an applied electric field in order to align the magnetic dipoles along a desired axis.

      There are numerous uses of piezoelectrics. For instance, plates cut from a single crystal can exhibit a specific natural resonance frequency (i.e., the frequency of an electromagnetic wave that causes it to vibrate mechanically at the same frequency); these can be used as a frequency standard in highly stable crystal-controlled clocks and in fixed-frequency communications devices. Other resonant applications include selective wave filters and transducers for sound generation, as in sonar. Broadband resonant devices (e.g., for ultrasonic cleaning and drilling) and nonresonant devices (e.g., accelerometers, pressure gauges, microphone pickups) are dominated by ceramic piezoelectrics. Precision positioners made from piezoelectric ceramics are utilized in the manufacture of integrated circuits and also in scanning tunneling microscopes, which obtain atomic-scale-resolution images of materials surfaces. Domestic uses of piezoelectrics include buzzers and manually operated gas igniters.

 Capacitor dielectrics and piezoelectric devices are among many other applications of advanced electroceramics. For a directory to articles on other electroceramic applications and to articles on all aspects of advanced and traditional ceramics, see Industrial Ceramics: Outline of Coverage—.

Additional Reading

Materials on capacitor dielectric and piezoelectric ceramics may be found in A.J. Moulson and J.M. Herbert, Electroceramics: Materials, Properties, Applications (1990); Larry L. Hench and J.K. West, Principles of Electronic Ceramics (1990); and the section titled “Electrical/Electronic Applications for Advanced Ceramics,” in Theodore J. Reinhart (ed.), Engineered Materials Handbook , vol. 4, Ceramics and Glasses, ed. by Samuel J. Schneider (1991), pp. 1105–66.A good introduction to ceramics in general is provided by David W. Richerson, Modern Ceramic Engineering: Properties, Processing, and Use in Design, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (1992). The processing of both traditional and advanced ceramics is described in James S. Reed, Introduction to the Principles of Ceramic Processing (1988); I.J. McColm and N.J. Clark, Forming, Shaping, and Working of High Performance Ceramics (1988); George Y. Onoda, Jr., and Larry L. Hench, Ceramic Processing Before Firing (1978); and four sections of the Reinhart book cited above: “Ceramic Powders and Processing,” pp. 41–122; “Forming and Predensification, and Nontraditional Densification Processes,” pp. 123–241; “Firing/Sintering: Densification,” pp. 242–312; and “Final Shaping and Surface Finishing,” pp. 313–376.Thomas O. Mason

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