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Ceramics joining has been widely applied in MEMS sensors, microwave and imaging devices as well as other ceramic packaging applications to fabricate multifunctional ceramic components. In this study, a glass frit with gradient thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) has been applied as the bonding material to join the ceramic of Al 2 O 3 and AlN. This glass frit consists of two types of glasses with different TEC. The Al 2 O 3 and AlN ceramics have been successfully joined with this glass frit in muffle furnace at 850 °C for 1 h. The bonding strength of Al 2 O 3 /AlN ceramic joined via this glass frit exceeds 40 MPa without any cracks in the joining interface, which is much superior compared with that of conventional glass frit bonding. Our work demonstrates that the gradient-TEC glass frit bonding is an effective method to join different types of ceramics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PbO–ZnO–B 2 O 3 (PZB) glass with low-melting temperature has been widely applied in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) packaging. However, the high thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) of PZB glass usually leads to strict packaging requirements. Here, in order to achieve ideal TEC, we have introduced β -eucryptite into PZB/ β -eucryptite composite glass and optimized the composite fabrication process. Firstly, PbO:ZnO:B 2 O 3 in mol ratio of 65:15:20 was selected as glass matrix owing to its low-melting temperature and good wettability. Then, β -eucryptite ceramics with ultra-low TEC were synthesized via a facile solid-state reaction method to optimize subsequent composite TEC value. The combination of corresponding material and device characterizations suggest that the pure phase and regular columnar grains of β -eucryptite ceramic can be obtained by sintering at 1450 °C for three hours, which can result in the lowest negative TEC of α 30-300°C = −10.74 × 10−6 K−1. Furthermore, regarding the PZB/ β -eucryptite composite glasses, systematic experiments demonstrated that the β -eucryptite introduction can greatly impact the TEC of matrix glass with only negligible effect on the softening point (T s). Importantly, composite glasses with TEC of α 30-300°C = 3.26 × 10−6 K−1, T s = 380 °C and wetting angle < 30° are ideal for MEMS packaging. This work implements optimized fabrication process to obtain low-melting PZB/ β -eucryptite composite glasses with ideal TEC values, which can be envisaged to be applied in advanced MEMS packaging applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of BaO content (up to 15 mol%) on the crystallization behaviour, structure, thermal properties and microwave dielectric properties of the BaO-CaO-B 2 O 3 -SiO 2 glasses and glass-ceramics system was investigated. The glasses were produced by melting at 1400 °C and quenching into water, and the glass-ceramics were produced via heat treatment at temperatures between 750 and 800 °C. The results of X-ray diffraction analysis showed that increasing the BaO content raised the resistance of the glass against crystallization and favoured the transformation of β-CaSiO 3 and α-CaSiO 3 phases, which crystallized in the Ba-free and in low BaO content compositions, into SiO 2 and Ba 4 Si 6 O 16 , which crystallized in compositions with higher concentrations of BaO. The BaO content had little influence on the glass transition temperature ( T g ) and the linear coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), but strongly reduced the softening point ( T s ). Even the addition of BaO as minor additives resulted in a dramatic reduction of the T s ; for example, the T s decreased from 902 °C for the Ba-free composition to 682 °C for the BaO-containing one (5%). Low values of the dielectric constant (5.9 ≤  ε r ≤ 6.63) and dielectric loss (1.12 × 10 −3 ≤ tan δ  ≤ 3.15 × 10 −3 ) were measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]