STTR Phase I: Low Temperature Cofired Multilayer Ceramic Power Transformers Incorporating Base Metallization Materials

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是广泛的电子产品，包括电源，逆变器负载点（POL）功率器件，电压隔离器和电压传感器。 抗EMI/RFI且抗辐射的高热操作为医疗、太空、国防和能源勘探提供了全新的电子设计解决方案。 这项新技术将是商业太阳能分布式POL解决方案、移动的/便携式电子产品的高性能适配器和转换器、机器人集成超小型电源的理想选择。 这一成功还将为NASA和商业航天公司等机构开辟新的能力，以集成一种新的超小型解决方案，将主总线电源转换为所有子系统，该解决方案比以往任何时候都更耐辐射和高温。 这对SmallSat/CubeSat（小型化卫星）界特别有意义。 此外，通过使用更便宜的铜材料，制造更高性能的致动器和传感器设备也将带来额外的好处，从而显著降低成本。这个小型企业技术转移研究（STTR）第一阶段项目将解决实现高功率/高性能陶瓷变压器的挑战，以取代传统的磁性元件。 用陶瓷代替磁性Transformer可使许多电子应用受益。其优点包括安全工作温度大幅提高、大幅减少电磁/射频干扰（EMI/RFI）问题以及减小尺寸/重量。目前还没有这样的变压器。 任何解决方案都需要多层结构;然而，对于变压器，这在电子工艺工程中引入了几个困难且未解决的挑战，这些挑战对于多层陶瓷电容器，压电致动器和压电传感器制造来说不是问题。 这些新的挑战包括多层结构现在必须实现每层的单独极化;因为Transformer器件必须在谐振下操作，所以它们现在产生更高水平的热能，需要大幅改善的热管理（电极电/热传导）;还需要用低损耗硬陶瓷代替软陶瓷。铜在电/热传导方面引入了非常优异的上级性能，但需要显著较低的工艺温度，这对于烧结硬质陶瓷来说将是具有挑战性的，但成功地提供了巨大的回报。该研究将研究一种新的低温工艺的有前途的方法，该工艺使用新的掺杂化学物质和有利的铜电极。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to a wide range of electronics as to include power supplies, inverters point-of-load (POL) power devices, voltage isolators and voltage sensors. The high thermal operation that is EMI/RFI immune and very rad hard enables completely new electronics design solutions for medical, space, defense, and energy exploration. This new technology proposed will be ideal for distributed POL solutions for commercial solar energy, high performance adaptors and converters for mobile/portable electronics, robotic integrated subcompact power supplies. The success will also open up new capabilities for agencies such as NASA, and commercial space companies to integrate a new subcompact solution for converting mains bus power to all of the subsystems that is far more radiation and high temperature tolerant than anything ever previously available. This is of particular interest to the SmallSat/CubeSat (miniaturized satellite) community. There will also be spin-off benefits to manufacturing of higher performance actuators and transducer devices that will see significant decreased costs through use of significantly less expensive copper materials.This Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase I project will address the challenge of enabling high power/high performance ceramic transformers that replaces conventional magnetics. Many electronics applications can benefit from replacing magnetic transformer with ceramics. Advantages include large increase in safe operating temperatures, drastically reducing the electromagnetic/radio frequency interference (EMI/RFI) issues, and reducing the size/weight. At present, no such transformers exist. Any solution will require multilayer construction; however, for transformers this introduces several difficult and unsolved challenges in electronics process engineering that are not issues for multilayer ceramic capacitors, piezoelectric actuators and piezoelectric sensors manufacture. These new challenges include that the multilayer construction must now enable individual poling of each layer; because transformer devices must operate at resonance they now generate much greater levels of thermal energy requiring drastically improved thermal management (electrode electrical/thermal conduction); also requires replacing soft ceramic with low loss hard ceramic. Copper introduces very superior properties in electrical/thermal conduction but requires significantly lower process temperatures that will be challenging to achieve for sintered hard ceramic but offers enormous pay-off with success. The research will investigate the promising approach of a new low temperature process that uses new doping chemistries and advantageous copper electroding.