abstract
Applying combinatorial methods to materials science offers the opportunity to accelerate the discovery of more efficient dielectric ceramics. High-throughput methods have the potential to investigate the effects of a wide range of dopants on the dielectric properties, and to optimise existing systems, encouraging the short innovation cycles that the communications technology industry requires. The London University Search Instrument (LUSI) is a fully automated, high-throughput combinatorial robot that has the potential capability to produce large numbers of sintered bulk ceramic samples with varying composition in 1 day, as combinatorial libraries on alumina substrates. Ba1-xSrxTiO3 (BST) libraries were produced by LUSI as a proof-of-principle, with x=0-1 in steps of 0.1, and fired to 1350 and 1400 C for 1 h. Part I of this paper described the manufacture and physical characterisation of BST libraries, showing a regular change in composition with x across the libraries. In this second part, the dielectric properties of BST libraries produced by LUSI are assessed at frequencies between 100 Hz and 1 MHz, and at temperatures between 150 and 500 K. Local piezoelectric properties were also characterised by scanning probe microscope (SPM). All measurements showed evidence of a clear functional gradient varying with x across the library, with measured epsilon(r) corresponding to expected values for BST. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
keywords
INK-JET PRINTER; SOLID-SOLUTIONS; TEMPERATURE; CONSTANT; SCIENCE
subject category
Materials Science
authors
Pullar, RC; Zhang, Y; Chen, LF; Yang, SF; Evans, JRG; Petrov, PK; Salak, AN; Kiselev, DA; Kholkin, AL; Ferreira, VM; Alford, NM
our authors
Andrei Kholkin
Principal Researcher
Andrei Salak
Principal Researcher
Rob Pullar
Collaborator