Conduction modelling of a conductive adhesive with bimodal distribution of conducting element

It is shown by the electric network percolation theory, that the isotropic conductive adhesive (ICA) using a bimodal distribution of metal fillers is expected to have a decreased metal loading for better mechanical performance while its electrical and manufacturing processing properties remain unchanged. Our computer modelling has demonstrated a decrease of 10% in the percolation volume percentage when the volume percentage of the nanoparticles in the ICA increases from 2.76 to 13.8%. During our numerical simulations, it has been shown that due to the dependence of the constriction resistance between two metal fillers on the geometric structure of the system, proper discretization of metal fillers in numerical simulation is of great importance. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.