Die attachment is one of the most important processes in the packaging of power semiconductor devices. The current die-attach materials/techniques, including conductive adhesives and reflowed solders, can not meet the advance of power conversation application. Silver paste sintering has been widely used in microelectronics and been demonstrated the superior properties. The high processing temperature, however, prevents its application of interconnecting power semiconductor devices. This research focuses processing and characterization of micron-scale and nanoscale silver paste for power semiconductor devices attachment. Lowering the processing temperature is the essential to implement sintering silver paste for power semiconductor devices attachment. Two low-temperature sintering techniques - pressure-assisted sintering micro-scale silver paste and sintering nanoscale silver paste without external pressure - were developed. With the large external pressure, the sintering temperature of micro-scale silver paste can be significantly lowered. The experimental results show that by using external pressure (>40MPa), the commercial micro-scale silver paste can be sintered to have eighty percent relative density at 240oC, which is compatible with the temperature of solder reflowing. The measured properties including electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, interfacial thermal resistance, and the shear strength of sintered silver joints, are significantly better than those of the reflowed solder layer. Given only twenty percent of small pores in the submicron range, the reliability of the silver joints is also better than that of the solder joints under the thermal cycled environment. The large external pressure, however, makes this technique difficult to automatically implement and also has a potential to damage the brittle power semiconductor devices. Reducing silver particles in the paste from micro-size to nanoscale can increases the sintering driving force and thus lowers the sintering temperature. Several approaches were developed to address sintering challenges of nanoscale silver particles, such as particles aggregation and/or agglomeration, and non-densification diffusion at low temperature. These approaches are : nanoscale silver slurry, instead of dry silver powder, is used to keep silver particles stable and prevent their aggregation. Ultrasonic vibration, instead of conventional ball milling, is applied to disperse nanoscale silver particles in the paste from to avoid from agglomerating. Selected organics in the paste are applied to delay the onset of mass-diffusion and prevent non-densification diffusion at low temperature. The measured results show that with heat-treatment at 300oC within one hour, the sintered nanoscale silver has significantly improved electrical and thermal properties than reflowed solders. The shear strength of sintered silver interconnection is compatible with that of solder. The low-temperature sinterable nanoscale silver paste was applied to attach the bare Silicon carbide (SiC) schottky barrier diode (SBD) for high temperature application. Limited burn-out path for organics in the silver layer challenges the sintering die-attach. This difficulty was lessened by reducing organics ratio in the silver paste. The effects of die-size and heating rate on sintering die-attach were also investigated. The single chip packaging of SiC SBD was fabricated by sintering die-attach and wire-bonding. The tested results demonstrate that the sintering nanoscale silver paste can be applied as a viable die-attach solution for high-temperature application. / Ph. D.

Les nanoparticules métalliques ont la particularité de fritter à des températures bien inférieures que les microparticules. Les pâtes de frittage à base de nanoparticules d'argent (Ag) sont commercialisées pour assembler des puces d'électronique de puissance à leur substrat. L’assemblage se fait classiquement entre 200 et 300°C, sous contrainte. Le joint métallique final obtenu possède d’excellentes propriétés de conductivités électrique et thermique. La température de fusion théorique du joint, une fois densifié, est égale à la température de fusion de l’Ag massif (962°C). Cette propriété fait de ce nanomatériau une excellente alternative dans l’électronique de puissance « haute température ». Le coût de l’argent, qui est un métal précieux, reste un frein à l’utilisation de ces pâtes de frittage. Une alternative pour baisser les coûts est de remplacer les nanoparticules d’argent par des nanoparticules de cuivre. Le cuivre possède des propriétés de conductivités très proches de celles de l’argent. Un obstacle majeur à l’intégration de nanoparticules de cuivre dans des pâtes de frittage est la propension du cuivre à s’oxyder. L’oxydation des nanoparticules empêche le frittage et diminue fortement les propriétés mécaniques ainsi que la conductivité du joint métallique final. En plus de cela, le cuivre, même non oxydé, est moins réactif lors du frittage et nécessite des températures plus élevées pour une bonne densification que l’argent. La stratégie choisie pour protéger les nanoparticules de cuivre de l’oxydation a été de les encapsuler dans un polymère ou avec une fine couche d’argent. L’obtention de systèmes cœur-coquille Cu@Ag, en plus d’augmenter la résistance face à l’oxydation, permet d’améliorer le frittage des joints. Une fois densifiés, les joints à base de nanoparticules Cu@Ag sont capables de résister à des contraintes mécaniques élevées. / Metallic nanoparticles have the particularity to sinter at lower temperatures compared to microparticles. Silver (Ag) nanoparticles based sintering pastes are commercially available for assembling power electronics chips to their substrates. The assembly is performed between 200 and 300°C, generally under pressure (Hot Pressing) and the resulting metallic joint has excellent thermal and electrical conductivity properties. The theoretical melting temperature of the resulting densified joint corresponds to the melting temperature of bulk silver (962°C), making the silver nanoparticles an alternative for "high temperature" power electronics compared to traditional solder. Nevertheless, the cost of Ag, which is a precious metal, remains a barrier to the use of these sintering pastes. The cost can be reduced by replacing the silver nanoparticles with copper (Cu) nanoparticles. Copper has conductive properties very close to silver. The major hurdle to the integration of copper nanoparticles in sintering pastes is the proneness of copper to oxidation. The oxidation of Cu nanoparticles prevents sintering and greatly reduces the mechanical properties and conductivity of the final metallic joint. Moreover, copper is less reactive during sintering and requires higher temperatures to densify. We chose to protect copper nanoparticles by encapsulation. In a first step copper nanoparticles were synthetized at laboratory scale and semi-industrial scale. In a second step the copper nanoparticles were encapsulated either with a polymer or very thin layer of Ag. The oxidation properties of the core-shell nanoparticles were studied. In a third step the Cu@Ag nanoparticles were formulated in a paste in order to obtain metallic joints. The sintering and density properties of the metallic joints were evaluated and positively compared to the joints obtained with a commercial Ag based paste. The Cu@Ag core-shell system prevents oxidation but also improves the sintering process.

This research has developed a lead-free semiconductor device interconnect technology by studying the processing-microstructure-property relationships of low-temperature sintering of nanoscale silver pastes. The nanoscale silver pastes have been formulated by adding organic components (dispersant, binder and thinner) into nano-silver particles. The selected organic components have the nano-particle polymeric stabilization, paste processing quality adjustment, and non-densifying diffusion retarding functions and thus help the pastes sinter to ~80% bulk density at temperatures no more than 300°C. It has been found that the low-temperature sintered silver has better electrical, thermal and overall thermomechanical properties compared with the existing semiconductor device interconnecting materials such as solder alloys and conductive epoxies. After solving the organic burnout problems associated with the covered sintering, a lead-free semiconductor device interconnect technology has been designed to be compatible with the existing surface-mounting techniques with potentially low-cost. It has been found that the low-temperature sintered silver joints have high electrical, thermal, and mechanical performance. The reliability of the silver joints has also been studied by the 50-250°C thermal cycling experiment. Finally, the bonging strength drop of the silver joints has been suggested to be ductile fracture in the silver joints as micro-voids nucleated at microscale grain boundaries during the temperature cycling. The low-temperature silver sintering technology has enabled some benchmark packaging concepts and substantial advantages in future applications. / Ph. D.

This study focused on the development and evaluation of die-attach material and substrate technology for high-temperature applications. For the die-attach material, a low-temperature sintering technique enabled by a nanoscale silver paste was developed for attaching large-area (>100 mm2) semiconductor chips. The nanoscale silver paste can be sintered at a much lower temperature (<300 oC) than in the conventional sintering process (>800 oC), and at the same time reached about 80 vol% bulk density. Analyses of the sintered joints by scanning acoustic imaging and electron microscopy showed that the attachment layer had a uniform microstructure with micron-sized porosity with the potential for high reliability under high temperature applications. We also investigated the effects of a large temperature cycling range on the reliability of direct bonded aluminum (DBA) substrate. DBA substrates with different metallization were thermally cycled between -55 oC and 250 oC. Unlike with the DBC substrate, no delamination of aluminum from the aluminum nitride ceramic base-plate was observed for the DBA substrates. However, aluminum surface became roughened during the thermal cycling test. It was believed that in the high-temperature regime, the significant amount of thermomechanical stress and grain-scale deformation would cause recrystallization and grain-boundary sliding in the aluminum layer, which would further lead to the observed increase in surface roughness. The influence of metallization over the aluminum surface on the extent of surface roughness was also characterized. In addition to evaluating the reliability of nanoscale silver paste and DBA substrate individually, this work also conducted experiments that characterize the compatibility of nanoscale silver paste on DBA substrate in terms of reliability in a high-temperature environment. In the large-area attachment, the sintered silver was found to be very compliant with the deformed aluminum. The device-to-silver and silver-to-substrate interfaces remain intact after up to 800 cycles. No large scale delamination and horizontal cracks were observed. However, some vertical crack lines began to show after certain number of cycles. It was believed that these vertical cracks were caused by the thermomechanical stresses in the sintered silver layer. In addition, with regard to the thermal performance, since most of the heat was generated from the semiconductor devices and were transferred vertically through the die-attach material to substrate, these vertical cracks were also considered more advantageous than horizontal cracks. / Ph. D.

Cold sintering process (CSP) je nová metoda pro slinování keramik a skel. Tato metoda vede ke snížení teploty (

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The present masters's thesis informs about the development and application of low-temperature sintering pastes in the manufacture and assembly of PCB components of the enclosing lead-free using nanoparticles of metals and their compounds. Lead-free brazing technology which s using in the present time, which has its drawbacks, however, and thus gaining other appropriate alternatives that seek to replace or further refined lead brazing. The introduction of the theoretical part inform about retrieval method of the type, composition and properties of low-temperature sintering pastes consisting of metal nanoparticles and their compounds. This section describes and explains the reaction mechanisms taking place during the sintering process. The end of the first chapter is dedicated to nanotechnology and production of nanoparticles and their compounds for the needs of the low-temperature sintering and possible related problems. Folowing section is devoted to examples of practitioners of the application and use of low-temperature sintering pastes and tests with which to assess the characteristics and quality of the related sintering conection. At the end of the thesis is a summary perspective and the use of low-temperature sintering technology nanoparticle past into the future. The experimental part is devoted to the application of conductive ink on the base of graphite for the production of 1V, 2V and 4V structures and their electroplated by the copper. There were created technological processes of 2V and 4V structures and test proposed methodologies resistance conductive theme to environmental influences. Filling pasta was tested in implementing 4V structure. There were made microsections various technological applications and their results were processed and evaluated.