Research of microscale silver particle paste on Al2O3, pre-dried dielectric layer and pre-fired dielectric layer substrate by a co-firing process

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the silver paste was prepared by highly dispersed spherical silver powders with an average particle size of 0.85 um. The silver conductive thick films were printed on Al2O3 and dielectric layer by screen-printing, the dielectric layer had been heat-treated differently, one was dried, the other fired. The corresponding sintering behaviors, electrical and mechanical properties of silver films were investigated systematically. Besides, we made a chip resistor to test performance. The results show that the silver conducting film on fired dielectric is compact, uniform and defect-free, the resistivity and adhesion are 2.54 uΩ·cm and 20.3 N mm−2 respectively. With the increase of sintering times, the conductivity of silver films on the fired dielectric layer increases first and then decreases, while the adhesion increases continuously. We proposed that the diffusion quantity of glasses from the dielectric layer to the surface was the key step in the period of the properties of silver films. The silver film on the fired dielectric layer has better applications in the high current chip resistors.