THE CONVENTIONAL CERAMIC AND ELECTRONIC DEVICES

The main objective of the present paper is to develop the low cost conventional ceramics to be suitable for electronic devices applications. The importance of these ceramics is not only because of their low cost but also because of the easy of processing and the availability of its raw materials. To achieve that, Abu Khrug nepheline tailing (Eastern Desert, Egypt) and Wadi Abu Suberia clays (near Aswan, Egypt) were fined and wet homogenously mixed at alternative ratios. Further, transition metal oxides were individually added with 2 and 5 wt % to modify the ceramic electrical properties. All compositions were then fired in the temperature range between 1100 and 1225 C for 1h. The main crystalline phases characterized by X – ray diffraction were cristobalite, albite, quartz and hematite, ZnAl 2 O 4 and MnFe 2 O 4 . ZnO – doped ceramics exhibited the best dielectric features, so they may be considered as promising candidates for future capacitor fabrication. In addition, some samples exhibited the inversion of resistance – temperature coefficient from PTCR to NTCR, whereas others exhibited NTCR effect.