Novel Isotropical Conductive Adhesives for Electronic Packaging Application

Isotropical conductive adhesives (ICAs) have recently received a lot of focus and attention from the researchers in electronic industry as a potential substitute to lead-bearing solders. In this paper, a novel kind of isotropical conductive adhesives was made by using silver (Ag) nanowires and nanosized silver particles as conductive fillers. These Ag nanowires with dismeters in the range of 30–50 nm and lengths of up to ${sim 50}~mu {rm m}$ could be synthesized by a solution-phase method, which was proceed by reducing silver nitrate with ethylene glycol in the presence of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP). Electrical property including bulk resistivity and mechanical property including shear strength were investigated and compared with that of conventional ICA filled with micrometer-sized Ag particles or nanometer-sized Ag particles. Our results indicated that ICA filled Ag nanowires exhibited higher conductivity, higher shear strength and low percolation threshold value than traditional ICA. Possible conductive mechanism was discussed based on theory calculation.