Boey YC, Ng SP and Tok AIY

School of Mechanical & Production Engineering

Nanyang Technological University

Singapore

One of the main reasons that AlN is unable to sustain its high theoretical thermal conductivity of 300 W/mK is the amount of dissolved oxygen present in the AlN lattice. The highest reported thermal conductivity obtained from AlN samples hover around 130-140 W/mK. It is therefore critical to determine the amount of dissolved oxygen present. In order to obtain phase composition and the elemental content of an unknown specimen, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and SEM-EDX can be use respectively. The XRD system can provide the intensity of the phase present and SEM-EDX system can determine the intensity of the element present. However both systems can only provide semi-quantitative analysis. In order to have quantitative analysis of unknown elements present, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRFS) is used. In this paper, wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer is used for the quantitative analysis of oxygen content in sintered AlN specimens. The advantage of using XRFS over other techniques is speed of analysis, very good stability, precision and a wide dynamic range from part per million level to 100% level.