Effect of epoxy and filler concentrations on curing behaviour of isotropic conductive adhesives

Isotropic conductive adhesives (ICAs) are considered as the most promising replacement to lead-based solders due to relatively low melting point, simple processing and fine pitch capability. The study reports on the effect of volume fractions of silver flakes and particles on the curing reaction of ICAs. In addition, the thermal behavior of ICAs formulated with two types of polymeric adhesives: diglycidylether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) and polyurethane (PU) was also investigated in this work. The increase in silver flakes concentration seem to reduce the melting temperature of the DEGBA and PU-based ICAs, which could be due to retardation of cross-linking of polymers due to silver flakes acting as barrier within the polymer matrix. In addition, the formulation of ICAs containing silver flakes and particles yielded a much higher reaction compared to conventional ICAs. The study showed that use of polyurethane (PU) as opposed to conventional Diglycidylether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) showed a more stable system.