The dielectric, thermal properties and crystallization mechanism of Li–Al – B–Si – O glass – Ceramic systems as a new ULTCC material

Li–Al–B–Si–O (LABS) glass-ceramics with a sintering temperature of 600 °C were studied for ultra-low temperature co-fired ceramics (ULTCC) applications. The crystal phase of LABS glass-ceramics is dendritic β-spodumene. The permittivity and dielectric loss of LABS glass-ceramics are εr = 5.8 and tgδ = 1.3 × 10−3 at 10 MHz, respectively. The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of LABS glass-ceramics is 3.23 ppm/°C, which is close to that of silicon. The dielectric and thermal properties of LABS glass-ceramics are closely correlated to the degree of its crystallization. The permittivity decreases continually while the dielectric loss decreases first and slightly increases with the increasing of crystallization of β-spodumene. The CTE of LABS glass-ceramics decreases as β-spodumene crystallized from LABS glass. The crystallization kinetic and mechanism of LABS glass-ceramics indicate that the β-spodumene crystallizes in a two-dimensional interfacial growth mechanism due to the migration of Li-ions. The diffusion coefficients derived from energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) results indicated that both Al and Ag electrodes have good compatibilities with ULTCC tapes, which could reduce the cost of multilayer electro-ceramic devices dramatically by using the ULTCC and base metallization.