ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic material and preparation method thereof
Technical Field
The invention relates to the technical field of ceramic preparation, in particular to ZnBiMnGeO-base pressure-sensitive ceramic material and a preparation method thereof.
Background
The ZnO-based voltage-sensitive ceramic is a nonlinear resistance material with internal resistance which can repeatedly change suddenly according to the voltage applied relative to a certain critical voltage (namely, the voltage-sensitive voltage). When the applied voltage is lower than the voltage-sensitive voltage, the internal electrode of the ZnO-based voltage-sensitive ceramic is very large, similar to an insulating state body; when the high applied voltage is higher than the voltage sensitive voltage, the internal resistance thereof is instantaneously reduced to an approximately conductive state. Based on the characteristic, a ZnO-based varistor made of ZnO voltage-sensitive ceramic is often connected into a circuit in parallel with a protected circuit or device to prevent damage to the protected circuit or device by abnormal surge voltage. At present, the application range of the ZnO-based piezoresistor already covers almost all electronic and electric fields such as low voltage, medium voltage and high voltage, and becomes an abnormal voltage surge protection device with the largest worldwide consumption.
All ZnO-based pressure-sensitive ceramics take ZnO powder as a main raw material. On the basis, Bi2O3、V2O5、Pr2O3(Pr6O11)、Cr2O3、Sb2O3、MnO2、Co2O3、Nb2O5、CaO, and various dopants such as various rare earth oxides are further added into the common high-performance ZnO-based pressure-sensitive ceramics, so that most of the components of the high-performance ZnO-based pressure-sensitive ceramics are often up to 6 or more. This multicomponent nature of ZnO based pressure sensitive ceramics undoubtedly aggravates the impact of the entire varistor industry on increasingly scarce natural resources.
Whatever process is adopted for preparation, the ZnO powder and various doping can be changed into pressure-sensitive ceramics only through a high-temperature sintering process. Most high performance ZnO based pressure sensitive ceramics have sintering temperatures above 1000 ℃, and some even higher, up to 1200 ℃. To meet such high sintering temperatures, electronics factories producing piezoresistors are not only more costly high-temperature sintering equipment, but also necessarily consume more electrical energy during production. In the process of producing the low-voltage sheet type piezoresistor by adopting a laminated cofiring process, the inner electrode must adopt alloys with high noble metal content such as Pt or Pd, but cannot adopt low-melting-point base metals such as Cu (melting point 1083 ℃), and the cost is higher. These factors are the main reasons for hindering energy conservation and consumption reduction of the whole ZnO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic industry and realizing green production.
In addition, when the ZnO-based piezoresistor is applied to an actual electronic circuit as an abnormal voltage surge protection device, even if the external field voltage born by the ZnO-based piezoresistor is smaller than the voltage-sensitive voltage of the ZnO-based piezoresistor, certain current can flow in the ZnO-based piezoresistor. Such a current is called leakage current, which is simply referred to as leakage current, and its magnitude is expressed by leakage current density. Therefore, the leakage current is a main cause of reactive power loss of the ZnO-based varistor in practical application. In order to reduce reactive power loss of the ZnO-based varistor in the practical application process, znO-based voltage-sensitive ceramics with as low leakage current as possible are required to be adopted.
Disclosure of Invention
Aiming at the existing problems, the invention provides a ZnBiMnGeO pressure-sensitive ceramic material taking GeO 2 as a main doping modification substance and a preparation method thereof.
The technical scheme of the invention is as follows:
ZnBiMnGeO simple-component pressure-sensitive ceramic comprises the following components in percentage by mole under the condition that the total molar content of four elements of Zn, bi, mn and Ge is 100 percent: bi is 0.5-5%, mn is 1-4%, ge is 0.05-0.5%.
The raw materials are oxides of four metal elements Zn, bi, mn and Ge, or compounds such as carbonate, nitrate, acetate or hydroxide which can be decomposed into the metal oxides, or pre-synthesized products which take the oxides of the four elements or other compounds as raw materials, for example Bi 2O3·2Mn2O3 or 6Bi 2O3·GeO2 type oxide solid solutions synthesized by the pre-heating reaction of Bi 2O3 and Mn 2O3 or GeO 2.
The preparation method of the ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic material comprises the following steps:
(1) Weighing ZnO, bi 2O3、MnCO3 and GeO 2 raw materials according to the molar ratio of Zn, bi, mn and Ge in the pressure-sensitive ceramic material, and preparing a ceramic green body by adopting a traditional solid phase process;
(2) Sintering the biscuit body after glue discharging to 875-1000 ℃ at a heating rate of 2-15 ℃/min, preserving heat for 1-6 hours, and finally naturally cooling to room temperature along with a furnace to obtain the pressure-sensitive ceramic material.
Preferably, the green body after glue discharging is heated to 975 ℃ at a heating rate of 4 ℃/min, sintered and kept for 3 hours.
The pressure sensitive ceramic can also adopt the existing ceramic synthesis process by casting molding method.
The invention has the beneficial effects that:
(1) The pressure-sensitive ceramic material disclosed by the invention takes ZnO as a main component, wherein the ZnO content is more than 90%, and only three doping components Bi, mn and Ge are added on the basis of ZnO, so that the ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic material is obtained.
(2) The invention adopts the traditional solid phase synthesis process, geO 2 and Bi 2O3 in the raw materials can start to form eutectic liquid phase at about 882 ℃, thereby improving the liquid phase generation amount in the sintering process and enabling the ceramic to be sintered at the low temperature of 975 ℃. The sintering temperature (975 ℃) is significantly lower than the melting point 1083℃of Cu. The low-temperature sintering characteristic can reduce the sintering cost in the preparation process of the single ZnO-based piezoresistor, and can also lead manufacturers to prepare the low-voltage laminated ZnO-based piezoresistor by taking ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic of the invention as a raw material and using Cu and other base metals to replace Pt or Ag-Pd alloy with higher melting point and price as an inner electrode.
(3) The cooling after sintering adopts a natural cooling method, and the slow cooling can not only release the stress on the crystal boundary in the ZnO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic, but also ensure that the doped ions dissolved into ZnO crystal grains and the eutectic liquid phase at high temperature are desolventized to the ZnO crystal boundary for a longer time, so that the obtained ZnO-based ceramic has better pressure-sensitive characteristic.
(4) According to the invention, the Ge is doped on the ZnO crystal boundary to form donor doping and zinc vacancy defects to strengthen the crystal boundary potential barrier, so that the performance of ZnBiMnGeO pressure-sensitive ceramic is optimized;
(5) The ZnBiMnGeO pressure-sensitive ceramic has excellent electrical performance, the pressure-sensitive voltage is 120-340V/mm, the nonlinear coefficient alpha is more than 40, and the leakage current density J L<10μA/cm2.
(6) Under the situation that natural resources and energy resources are increasingly deficient at present, the invention provides the ZnO-based pressure-sensitive material which simultaneously meets the requirements of three aspects of component simplification, sintering low temperature and leakage current low value, and provides a new idea for the green sustainable development of the whole piezoresistor industry.
(7) The novel pressure-sensitive ceramic material is not only suitable for the split ZnO-based piezoresistor in the high-medium voltage field, but also suitable for the chip type laminated ZnO-based piezoresistor in the low-voltage application field, and is an ideal substitute for the ZnO piezoresistor ceramic material of various systems with the sintering temperature higher than 1000 ℃. The related products can be used as high-voltage power transmission and lightning arresters, overvoltage protectors of medium-voltage automobiles, overvoltage protectors of integrated circuits in the low-voltage field and the like, and have very wide market prospect.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is an E-J curve of ZnBiMnGeO pressure sensitive ceramics according to example 1;
FIG. 2 is an E-J curve of ZnBiMnGeO pressure sensitive ceramics according to example 2;
FIG. 3 is an E-J curve of ZnBiMnGeO pressure sensitive ceramics according to example 3.
Detailed Description
The invention is further illustrated by the following examples, which are not intended to be limiting.
Table 1 ceramic powder formulations (mol%) for the examples
Raw materials |
ZnO |
Bi2O3 |
MnCO3 |
GeO2 |
Example 1 |
97.44 |
0.50 |
2.00 |
0.06 |
Example 2 |
97.40 |
0.50 |
2.00 |
0.10 |
Example 3 |
97.35 |
0.50 |
2.00 |
0.15 |
Example 1: a preparation method of ZnBiMnGeO-based high-performance pressure-sensitive ceramic material comprises the following steps:
(1) Accurately weighing according to the formula of the ceramic powder, wherein the mole percentages of the raw materials are as follows: znO 97.44, bi 2O30.5、MnCO3 2 and GeO 2 0.06.06;
The ceramic green body is prepared by adopting the traditional solid phase process, and the specific process is as follows: ball milling all raw materials for 12h by adopting a planetary ball mill and adopting zirconia balls and absolute ethyl alcohol as ball milling media; putting the ball-milled raw material slurry into an oven at 80 ℃ for drying for 24 hours; mixing the dried raw materials with a proper amount of polyvinyl alcohol with the concentration of 5%, granulating, and compressing into a green body with the diameter of 12mm and the thickness of about 1.2 mm; heating the green body to 500 ℃ at a heating rate of 1 ℃/min, and preserving heat for 1 hour to perform glue discharging (namely discharging polyvinyl alcohol);
(2) Sintering the green body after glue discharging to 975 ℃ at a heating rate of 4 ℃/min, preserving heat for 3 hours, and naturally cooling to room temperature along with a furnace to obtain the zinc oxide-based pressure-sensitive ceramic sample.
The upper and lower surfaces of the sintered sample were polished to prepare silver electrodes, and the E-J curves were measured, as shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 shows that the nonlinear transition of the E-J curve of the sample from the low current density region to the high current density region exhibits a "knee" trend that is typical of piezoresistors; whereas the "knee" has been approximated by a right angle, indicating that the sample has good nonlinear electrical properties. Based on this, the nonlinear coefficient α, the voltage-sensitive voltage E b, and the leakage current density J L of the sample to be measured were calculated, respectively, and the results are shown in table 2.
TABLE 2 Performance index of pressure sensitive ceramics of example 1
Table 2 shows that the product of example 1 has a nonlinear coefficient α as high as 48.62, a voltage-sensitive voltage of 338.10V/mm and an average grain diameter of 7.47 μm; meanwhile, the leakage current density was only 6.09. Mu.A/cm 2.
Example 2: a preparation method of ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic material comprises the following steps:
(1) Accurately weighing according to the formula of the ceramic powder, wherein the mole percentages of the raw materials are as follows: : znO 97.40, bi 2O30.5、MnCO3 2, and GeO 2 0.1.1;
Adopting a traditional solid-phase process to prepare a ceramic green body, specifically adopting a planetary ball mill, ball milling zirconia balls and absolute ethyl alcohol as ball milling media, and ball milling all raw materials for 12 hours; putting the ball-milled raw material slurry into an oven at 80 ℃ for drying for 24 hours; mixing the dried raw materials with a proper amount of polyvinyl alcohol with the concentration of 5%, granulating, and compressing into a green body with the diameter of 12mm and the thickness of about 1.2 mm; heating the green body to 500 ℃ at a heating rate of 1 ℃/min, and preserving heat for 1 hour to perform glue discharging (namely discharging polyvinyl alcohol);
(2) Sintering the green body after glue discharging to 975 ℃ at a heating rate of 4 ℃/min, preserving heat for 3 hours, and naturally cooling to room temperature along with a furnace; obtaining the zinc oxide-based pressure sensitive ceramic.
The upper and lower surfaces of the sintered sample were polished to prepare silver electrodes, and the E-J curves were measured as shown in FIG. 2. FIG. 2 shows that the non-linear transition of the E-J curve of the sample from the low current density region to the high current density region also exhibits a "knee" trend that is typical of piezoresistors; whereas the "knee" has been approximated by a right angle, indicating that the sample has good nonlinear electrical properties. Based on the above, the nonlinear coefficient alpha, the voltage-sensitive voltage E b and the leakage current density J L of the tested sample are calculated respectively, and the results are summarized in Table 3.
TABLE 3 Performance index of pressure sensitive ceramics of example 2
The data in Table 3 shows that as the GeO 2 doping level increases, the average grain size increases to 7.63 μm and the pressure sensitive voltage drops to 201.61V/mm; the nonlinear coefficient is slightly reduced and still greater than 40; the leakage current density was at a low level of 7.28. Mu.A/cm 2.
Example 3: a preparation method of ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic material comprises the following steps:
(1) Accurately weighing according to the formula of the ceramic powder, wherein the mole percentages of the raw materials are as follows: : znO 97.35, bi 2O30.5、MnCO3 2 and GeO 2 0.15.15;
The ceramic green body is prepared by adopting the traditional solid phase process, and the specific process is as follows: ball milling all raw materials for 12h by adopting a planetary ball mill and adopting zirconia balls and absolute ethyl alcohol as ball milling media; putting the ball-milled raw material slurry into an oven at 80 ℃ for drying for 24 hours; mixing the dried raw materials with a proper amount of polyvinyl alcohol with the concentration of 5%, granulating, and compressing into a green body with the diameter of 12mm and the thickness of about 1.2 mm; heating the green body to 500 ℃ at a heating rate of 1 ℃/min, and preserving heat for 1 hour to perform glue discharging (namely discharging polyvinyl alcohol);
(2) Sintering the green body after glue discharging to 975 ℃ at a heating rate of 4 ℃/min, preserving heat for 3 hours, and naturally cooling to room temperature along with a furnace; obtaining the zinc oxide-based pressure sensitive ceramic.
The upper and lower surfaces of the sintered sample were polished to prepare silver electrodes, and the E-J curves were measured, as shown in FIG. 3. FIG. 3 shows that the non-linear transition of the E-J curve of the sample from the low current density region to the high current density region also exhibits a "knee" trend that is typical of piezoresistors; whereas the "knee" has been approximated by a right angle, indicating that the sample has good nonlinear electrical properties. Based on this, the nonlinear coefficient α, the voltage-sensitive voltage E b, and the leakage current density J L of the sample to be measured were calculated, respectively, and the results are summarized in table 4.
TABLE 4 Performance index of pressure sensitive ceramics of example 3
Table 4 shows that as the GeO2 doping amount increases, the average grain size increases to 7.80 μm and the pressure sensitive voltage decreases to 129.24V/mm. The non-linear coefficient alpha can still be maintained at a higher level than 40. The leakage current density was only 8.55. Mu.A/cm 2.
The ZnO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic is prepared by adopting a solid-phase sintering process, and can be completely sintered at a low temperature of 975 ℃. The high-performance pressure-sensitive ceramic with the nonlinear coefficient of more than 40, the pressure-sensitive voltage of 100-400V/mm and the leakage current density of less than 10 mu A/cm < 2 > can be prepared by adding a very small amount of GeO2 (0.05-0.5 percent by mole percent).
The sintering temperature (975 ℃) of the process is obviously lower than the melting point 1083 ℃ of Cu. The low-temperature sintering characteristic can reduce the sintering cost in the preparation process of the ZnO-based piezoresistor, and can also enable manufacturers to prepare the low-voltage laminated ZnO-based piezoresistor by taking ZnBiMnGeO-based pressure-sensitive ceramic of the invention as a raw material and using Cu and other base metals to replace Pt or Ag-Pd alloy with higher melting point and price as an inner electrode. In summary, the high-performance ZnBiMnGeO pressure-sensitive ceramic provides a new idea for low-cost green production and application of ZnO-based piezoresistors.