Sintering of SiC enhanced copper paste for high power applications

Paper in proceeding, 2017

In this work a Cu paste consisting in both micro and nanoparticles was produced. The copper paste was produced with different additive weight percentages of Ag coated SiC and sintered for 30min at 500°C under 6,5MPa in N2 atmosphere. The thermal resistance and composition of the resulting joints was studied. XPS and EDX measurements show no significant oxidation of the Cu after sintering, which is attributed to the combination of reductive agents in the paste and the inert atmosphere. SEM images of cross sections show contacts with no voids between the SiC particles and the copper matrix. Thermal conductivity measurements with laser flash analysis (LFA) show that the additive increases the effective thermal conductivity to more than double of that of the pure copper paste at 2% additive weight percentage, but bigger amounts yield smaller improvements and presumably would eventually worsen it.