Annica Brandenburg

3D-Shaping of Ceramic Tapes to Manufacture a High-Temperature Miniaturized Furnace

This contribution shows results of 3D-shaping experiments of ceramic tapes. The structures were made by wrapping structured tapes around a hexagonal alumina rod. After lamination, the rod was removed and the structure was finally fired, similarly as reported in [1]. One out of many possible applications of such structures is a miniaturized furnace for sintering of critical materials, which could contaminate expensive chamber furnaces, for tempering of single gas sensors, or for fast heating at controlled rate. While LTCC technology can be applied only up to 600–700 °C, application of HTCC tapes can extend temperature range to above 1000 °C. Therefore, 99.99% alumina tape (ESL 44007) was used. The here-shown miniaturized furnace has a hexagonal form. For a proper temperature distribution in the furnace chamber, the furnace was equipped with six platinum heaters that can be controlled independently. Finite Elements Analysis (FEM) supported the design process. The paper discusses manufacturing route, beginni...

Application of Cylindrical Pipe-Type LTCC Substrates as a Platform for Multi-Array Gas Sensors

Thick-film technology-based gas sensors have been known for many years. On a ceramic substrate, a thick-film heater, electrodes, and a gas sensitive layer are deposited. Due to the ease of layer deposition, such structures are usually manufactured as planar ones. However, recently-suggested cylindrical pipe-type substrates made in LTCC technology offer unique inherent advantages for gas sensor technology, like a uniform temperature profile along the gas sensitive layer or a reduction of the distortion of the gas flow in the pipe. As shown in our previous study, cylindrical LTCC substrates with inner electrodes and integrated heaters may be very promising in the field of high-temperature gas sensors. In this paper, we continue our work on cylindrically shaped LTCC sensor substrates, with special focus on the construction of a platform with multiple heater/electrodes couples for multi-array gas sensors. For such multi-sensor structures, decoupling of the heat sources is the most important platform feature. ...