High temperature measurements of the microwave dielectric properties of ceramics

Equipment has been developed for the measurement of dielectric properties at high temperature from 25 to 1700 deg. C in the microwave frequency range 614.97 to 3620.66 MHz using the cavity perturbation technique, to measure the permittivity of a range of ceramic materials. The complex permittivities of the standard materials, water and methanol, were measured at low temperature and compared with the other published data. A statistical analysis was made for the permittivity measurements of water and methanol using sample holders of different diameter. Also the measurements of these materials were used to compare the simple perturbation equation with its modifications and alternation correction methods for sample shape and the holes at the two endplates of the cavity. The dielectric properties of solid materials were investigated from the permittivity measurements on powder materials, shown in table 4.7, using the dielectric mixture equations. Two kinds of ceramics, oxide and nitrides, were selected for the high temperature dielectric measurements in microwave frequency ranges. Pure zirconia, yttria-stabilised zirconia, and Magnesia-stabilised zirconia are the oxide ceramics while aluminium nitride and silicon nitride are the nitride ceramics. A phase transformation from monoclinic to tetragonal was observed in pure zirconia in terms of the complex permittivity measurements, and the conduction mechanism in three regions of temperature was suggested to be ionic in the first region and a mixture of ionic and electronic in the second. The phase transition disappeared with yttria-stabilised zirconia but it was observed with magnesia-stabilised zirconia. Yttria doped zirconia was fully stabilised while magnesia stabilised was partially stabilised zirconia. The dielectric property measurements of aluminium nitride indicated that there is a transition from AIN to AlON, which suggested that the external layer of the AIN which was exposed to the air, contains alumina. It was found that the conduction mechanism of aluminium nitride at low temperature is a mixture of ionic and electronic but at high temperature the electronic conduction dominated. Silicon nitride dielectric properties measurements show that there is a change of the two complex permittivity parts, #epsilon#' and #epsilon#'', with increases of temperature. This change was related to the degree of the densification which increases with the increases of temperature. The behaviour of SiN at low temperature has a similarity with insulators while at high temperature it has an electronic conduction. (author)Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN036712 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo