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Oxide dielectrics
have revolutionized the wireless communications industry by reducing
the
size and cost of frequency filters and oscillators. Commercially
viable "microwave ceramics" must have a high dielectric constant, low
dielectric
loss in the microwave region, and temperature stability of their
resonant
frequency. Only a handful of oxides have thus far been identified
with the requisite properties.
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Our
research is aimed toward understanding what aspects of the structure
and
chemistry of these systems are important in mediating their microwave
response.
Our principal focus is to understand the role of cation order-disorder
and other related structural phenomena and to utilize these insights to
develop a new generation of materials.
We have also begun work to identify new low sintering
temperature systems.
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The publications listed
below provide more information on our work and deal with systems that
are
widely used in current wireless technologies (perovskites, zirconium
titanates,
barium rare earth titanates), as well as those that are not currently
in
use may be capable of producing higher levels of performance. In
addition to these publications our group has presented invited and
contributed
papers at many national and international scientific meetings.
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This work has been funded
by industry (e.g. Ericsson Radio Access), by federal sources (National
Science Foundation). and the State of Pennsylvania supported Benjamin
Franklin Program. It also involves collaborations with a number
of other
research groups including, for example, Dr. Tyke Negas at TCI Ceramics
Inc., Dr.'s Bob Roth and Terrell Vanderah at NIST, and Dr.'s Dani
Suvorov
and Matjaz Valant at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia.