Jonathan H. Harris

The Oxygen-Related Defect in Aluminum Nitride Ceramics: a Thermal Conduction Limiting Defect in a Technologically Important Material

Aluminum nitride (AlN) sintered ceramics are a critical new material for electronic packaging applications, principally because of AlNs high thermal conductivity and close thermal expansion match to silicon. AlN is expected to play a key role in the next generation of high powder electronic packages, in applications ranging from high power discrete component substrates to co-fired, multilayer packages for integrated circuits. In the following paper, a detailed picture of the oxygen-related defect in AlN ceramics is presented. This impurity is of critical technological importance, because vacancies associated with oxygen severely limit thermal conduction when present in high concentrations. The results of thermal conductivity measurements, luminescence studies, optical absorption experiments, photo-induced absorption studies and electrical measurements on both ceramic and single crystal samples will be presented in order to understand the detailed nature of this defect and to model its control over a number of important technological properties.