Printed Electroceramics with Ultimate Compositions

The ultimate goal of this research is to make extremely advanced leap enabling processing of wide variety of ceramic materials at ultra low temperatures denoted as ULTIMATE CERAMICS (200-500 °C). The project has its risks, but advantages like utilization of pure ceramic materials on challenging substrates like plastic and paper could offer novel scientific results as well as business opportunities to European industry. Key issues based on scientific laws of matters forming the basic research methodology to succeed are

• intelligent selection and development of starting materials
• utilization of nano technology
• management of dense and uniform packaging of powder particles
• minimization of required activation energy during sintering
• management of type, level and rate of diffusion in sintering
• microwave sintering

There are several reasons why this kind of ULTIMATE CERAMICS can now be seriously research. The main issues are that nano particle silver pastes sinterable at ~ 200 °C have recently become commercially available, and ceramics with nano particle size have been widely on the market. However, taking the high risk, ground-breaking challenge, ultimate novel materials and processes are available. ULTIMATE CERAMICS offer significance novel business opportunities for European industry not available in any other way since ceramic materials are able to perform e.g. as semiconductors, dielectric, non-linear dielectrics, sensors, and electrically or magnetically tunable devices. In the industrial point of view, the main issue is to enable printable structures on paper compatible with nano particle silver electrodes and printed organic materials. It is also obvious that novel scientific results will be created especially when several techniques like e.g. microwave sintering – nano particles – sintering aids –silver electrodes - are combined.

Links

• Project information in Cordis