Epoxy-Based Composite Adhesive Containing Silver Coated Copper Powder: Preparation and Evaluation of Its Electrical Properties

The progress in scientific and technical products and increasing needs for advanced electrical and electronic devices have motivated researchers to investigate new ideas in this field. One of the main challenges in this way is the connection between microchips and other parts of electrical boards. Lead-based alloys, especially tin-lead solders are the conventional materials which have destructive effects on living organisms and the environment. Electrical conductive adhesives, used as replacement for lead-based solders, are composites comprised of a polymer matrix as adhesive material and conductive fillers for conduction of electricity. In this research conductive adhesives were prepared using diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A epoxy resin as the polymer matrix and various amounts of silver-coated copper powder as conductive filler. The copper powder was coated with silver using electroless plating. The structural properties of the filler was characterized by inductivity coupled plasma analysis. The morphology of the samples was investigated by scanning electron microscopy. The conductive properties, shear strength and thermal stability of adhesives were also evaluated. The conductive adhesive containing 70 percent by weight of silver-coated copper powder showed optimum properties. For this sample an electrical resistivity of 2.8×10-2 Ω.cm and a shear strength of 10.77 MPa were obtained. In addition, the weight loss during thermogravimetric reduction was 23.69% for the optimum sample, while it was 88.71% for the sample with no filler, indicating an improvement in thermal stability due to adding filler.