Conductivity enhancement of polymer composites using high temperature short-time treated silver fillers

In this work, we develop an easy, convenient and effective high-temperature short-time annealing method to treat silver fillers through decomposing the silver oxide on the surface into silver nanoparticles and also in-situ paralyzing part of the surface lubricants to reduce the length of the tunneling distance between neighboring silver flakes. The modified micro silver flakes play a significant role in improving the electrical conductivity of the corresponding electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs), exhibiting the lowest resistivity of 1.28 x 10(-4) Omega cm at 70 wt% filler loading. This work suggests that the high temperature short-time annealing strategy can greatly enhance the electrical conductivity of as treated silver flakes based ECAs, which will allow them to be widely used in electronic packaging. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.