Effect of sintering method on properties of nanosilver paste

Nanoscale silver paste has a good application prospect in heat dissipation of high-power chips due to the characteristics of low temperature sintering and high temperature service. The properties of the nanosilver paste including thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and shear strength are affected greatly by the sintering process. The influence of different sintering methods on the performance of the nanosilver paste was studied in this article. The nanosilver paste with 80.5 wt% nano-scale silver particles, 1.5 wt% submicron-scale SiC particles with Ag coating, 0.9 wt% dispersion agent, 10 wt% organic carrier and 7.1 wt% diluting agent was sintered at 260°C for 30 min with three different methods, heating table sintering, heating furnace sintering, and mixed sintering. The samples obtained by mixed sintering process have higher thermal conductivity than the ones obtained by heating furnace sintering method and heating table sintering method. The effect of sintering methods on shear strength of nanosilver paste was also investigated subsequently. Shear testing equipment was used to measure the shear strength of the samples gained by heating table sintering, heating furnace sintering, and air dry oven sintering. The maximum shear strength was obtained for the samples by heating table sintering method. The shear strength of samples by air dry oven sintering method was the minimum one.