Component Attachment with Pressureless Sintering for 300°C Applications

With an increased demand for high power and high temperature electronics, Ag sintering paste has been considered a promising Pb-free die attach material candidate for these applications. A large amount of research has been performed investigating pressure and pressureless Ag sintering for die attach. In this work, passive component (chip resistor) attachment with Ag sintering was explored. Due to termination geometry differences between resistors and die, different processing procedures and parameters were developed. For PtAu terminated resistors, the mean shear force of as-built samples on thick film Ag metallized substrates was 90 N, but dropped to 18.6 N after 1500 hours at 300°C. Formation of a dense Ag layer near the PtAu resistor termination and a void region near the thick film metallization was observed in cross-sections after 1000 hours at 300°C. For PdAg terminated resistors with a plated Ni/Au finish, the initial shear force results were low due to Ag diffusion along Au metallization surface. For PdAg terminated resistors with Ag thick film substrates, the initial shear force was approximately 60 N and remained in the range of 50–70 N during aging at 300°C for 1500 hours. A new thick film metallization (Au+Ag) was developed to enable the use of thick film Au interconnect metallization.