Study of the Aid Effect of CuO-TiO2-Nb2O5 on the Dielectric and Structural Properties of Alumina Ceramics

The aim of this work is to study the structural, dielectric, and mechanical properties of aluminum oxide ceramics with the triple sintering additive 4CuO-TiO2-2Nb2O5. With an increase in sintering temperature from 1050 to 1500 °C, the average grain size and the microhardness value at a load of 100 N (HV0.1) increased with increasing density. It has been shown that at a sintering temperature of 1300 °C, the addition of a 4CuO-TiO2-2Nb2O5 additive increases the low-frequency permittivity (2–500 Hz) in alumina ceramic by more than an order of magnitude due to the presence of a quadruple perovskite phase. At the same time, the density of such ceramics reached 89% of the theoretical density of α-Al2O3, and the microhardness value HV0.1 was 1344. It was observed that the introduction of 5 wt.% 4CuO-TiO2-2Nb2O5 in the raw mixture remarkably increases values of shrinkage and density of sintered ceramics. Overall, the results of this work confirmed that introducing the 4CuO-TiO2-2Nb2O5 sintering additive in the standard solid-phase ceramics route can significantly reduce the processing temperature of alumina ceramics, even when micron-sized powders are used as a starting material. The obtained samples demonstrated the potential of α-Al2O3 with the triple additive in such applications as electronics, microwave technology, and nuclear power engineering.