Articles sealed with glass

Details Articles sealed with glass Articles sealed with glass

2002-02-06

2003-07-01

Dunn, Tom (Department: 1725)

Stock material or miscellaneous articles

Web or sheet containing structurally defined element or...

Including a second component containing structurally defined...

C428S426000, C428S428000, C428S432000, C065S042000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06586087

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention pertains to articles made from materials (e.g., borosilicate glasses or glass-ceramics) that are suited to be sealed using a copper aluminosilicate glass. The joining of component parts together by means of a fused glass seal to form a composite article is a well-cultivated art. In particular, numerous special sealing glasses have been developed for use in joining glass parts with each other, or with metals, alloys, or ceramics. In making a fusion-type seal, the sealing material must be heated to a temperature where it becomes soft enough to wet the sealing surface and form an adhesive, hermetic bond.
The type of glass used in forming a fusion-type seal varies according to the desired properties of the article being sealed. For many purposes, manufacturers want to keep the softening temperature (softening point) as low as possible, while also maintaining a low to medium coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). This is particularly true for lamp work having electrical and electronic articles where thermally sensitive parts or coatings are commonly used.
Typically, electrical lamps employ borosilicate glass envelopes or bulbs and require joining or sealing of these envelopes to either another piece of glass or metal (usually electrodes) to achieve hermeticity within the glass vessel. Borosilicate glass has a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 30-40×10
−7
/° C. The normal CTE for borosilicate lamp glasses, such as Pyrex® by Corning, is 38×10
−7
/° C. The elements enclosed in the glass vessel may include phosphor coatings (fluorescent lamps), metal electrodes, or metallic reflective coatings. Coatings and electrodes require a hermetic environment, otherwise their properties diminish, and as a result the lifetime of the device is dramatically shortened. The coatings elements, however, are typically sensitive to relatively high temperatures, especially greater than 600° C., and thus sealing temperatures must be maintained low, and processing times must be maintained short to avoid decomposition or degradation of these components.
The current workable sealing glasses used in lamps of the type described above are phosphate based frits. Phosphate frits have the advantage of low softening points and, hence, are considered low temperature sealing glasses. Solder glasses currently available can be classified in two categories: 1) leaded phosphate sealing glasses and 2) non-leaded phosphate sealing glasses. Both categories contain compositions that can be classified as vitreous or crystallized, in which crystallized sealing glasses are resistant to deformation under the conditions of reheating in vacuum—an advantage, for example, in television manufacture applications. In the prior art, medium expansion of sealing glasses is established typically by adding low expansion fillers (usually cordierite, lithium alumino-silicate glass-ceramics, or crystalline cobalt pyrophosphate, or magnesium pyrophosphate) to relatively high expansion base glass compositions (60-120×10
−7
/° C.) that have a relatively low softening points (350-400° C.).
The two categories of phosphate sealing glasses mentioned above, however, suffer from a number of disadvantages. First, as stated before, to bring down the CTE, phosphate glasses require adding substantial amounts of fillers. The fillers can add significantly to the overall cost of the glass frit. Second, the addition of filler mandates that the sealing glass be used in a powdered form, which is less desirable for tubular geometries. Third, these phosphate frits tend to create seals that are not consistently heremetic when used to seal borosilicate glass, particularly when a desired application calls for the use of a tube geometry. Phosphate glass frits by their inherent nature need to be used in either a dry powder or paste form. Air permeates the seal because the frit powder or paste does not densify completely. Gaps and pores often will appear during the sintering process as the organic binders in the paste de-gas when burned-out under high temperatures. Additionally, as the phosphate frit melts, the glass tends to flow under gravity towards the bottom. Even though, phosphate frits can seal flat glass applications without much problems, some gaps or pores, however small, will always exist between the frit particles in complex geometric applications aside from flat glasses. Moreover, it is difficult to cover or seal certain geometric configurations, such as round or cylindrical forms with loose powder or even paste. Since sealing glasses used in the powdered form is susceptible to porosity within the seal, hermeticity is harder to achieve in the seal.
At the present time, a need for improvement continues to be unsatisfied in the medium-expansion sealing/solder glass industry, especially in seals for electrical lamp constructions such as photoflash lamps, vehicle headlamps and lamps for fluorescent lighting. If one has to use a solder glass to join together various glass articles or pieces that are characterized as having medium expansion, one has limited options.
Sealing glasses composed essentially of copper aluminum and silicon oxides are also known in the art. In contrast to phosphate glasses, these copper glasses have low to medium coefficients of thermal expansion that typically do not exceed 20×10
−7
/° C., but rather are lower than 10×10
−7
/° C., over a broad temperature range. Briefly studied in the 1960s and early 1970s, this property made copper alumino-silicates a favored type of sealing glass for joining fused silica, fused quartz, and other low-expansion glass and glass-ceramics materials.
To illustrate, the following patents describe some of the qualities and applications of copper sealing glasses that are known. U.S. Pat. No. 3,414,465 (Baak et al.) discloses a copper sealing glass used for forming fused quartz to fused quartz seals and fused silica-to fused silica seals. The glass has a composition of 50-90 mol % SiO
2
, 5-30 mol % Al
2
O
3
, 5-30 mol % Cu
2
O, 0-6 mol % NiO, 0-6 mol % Fe
2
O
3
, and 0-6 mol % AlF
3
. The '465 patent describes the copper sealing glasses composition as generally having a coefficient of linear thermal expansion of not more than about 10×10−7/° C. in the temperature range of 0-300° C.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,445,212 (Bishop) teaches a method of sealing a copper lead-in conductor to a surface of a low-expansion silica containing material using a reduced copper sealing glass. The sealing glass is selected from the group of glasses consisting of 75-80 mol % SiO
2
, 8-12 mol % Al
2
O
3
, 10-15 mol % Cu
2
O, and a glass consist 75-80 mol % SiO
2
, 8-12 mol % Al
2
O
3
, 10-15 mol % Cu
2
O, and 1-3 mol % AlF
3
. The glass composition described in the '212 patent is designed to seal low expansion ceramic, fused quartz or silica bodies with a coefficient of expansion of about 20×10
−7
/° C. or preferably less in the temperature range of 0-300° C.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,451,579 (Bishop) discloses a vitreous solder glass composition for bonding a fused silica window to a ceramic body lamp, the composition consisting of 75-80 mol % SiO
2
, 8-12 mol % Al
2
O
3
, 10-15 mol % Cu
2
O. The '579 patent further discloses a sealing glass consisting of 75-80 mol % SiO
2
, 8-12 mol % Al
2
O
3
, 10-15 mol % Cu
2
O, and 1-3 mol % AlF
3
, with a coefficient of expansion of 4-10×10
−7
/° C. over the temperature range of 0-300° C.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,459,569 (Ellis) discloses glass compositions for sealing and decorating low expansion glass-ceramic materials and borosilicate type glasses. The glass compositions contain 55-70 mol % SiO
2
, 6-10 mol % Al
2
O
3
, 0-2.5 mol % MnO
2
, 0-3 mol % Fe
2
O
3
, 5-12 mol % Cu
2
O, and 10-22 mol % Li
2
O.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,498,876 (Baak et al.) describes copper-zinc alumino-silicate glasses for sealing with low thermal expansion materials such as fused quartz and fused silica. The glasses have compositions consisting essentially of 50-94 mol % SiO
2
, 0.5 -

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