NOVEL LOW-TEMPERATURE SYNTHESIS OF GLASSES AND GLASS-CERAMICS IN THE B2O3-SIO2-P2O5 SYSTEM

In recent years considerable progress has been made in electronic packaging substrate technology. The future need of miniaturization of devices to increase the signal processing speed calls for an increase in the device density requiring the substrates to be designed for better thermal, mechanical and electrical efficiency. Fast signal propagation with minimum delay requires the substrate to possess very low dielectric constant. Several glasses and glass-ceramic materials have been identified over the years which show good promise as candidate substrate materials. Among these, borophosphate and borophosphosilicate glass-ceramics have been recently identified to have the lowest dielectric constant (3.8). Sol-gel processing has been used to synthesize borosilicate, borophosphosilicate and borophosphate glasses and glass-ceramics using inexpensive boron oxide and phosphorus pentoxide precursors. Preliminary results of the processing of these gels and the effect of volatility of boron alkoxide and its modification on the gel structure are described. X-ray diffraction, differential thermal analysis and Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy have been used to characterize the as-as-prepared and heat-treated gels.