Preparation and sintering properties in air of silver-coated copper powders and pastes

In this paper, uniform and well dispersed silver-coated copper powders were prepared by replacing reaction at first. The structure and properties of the bimetallic powders were investigated by XRD, SEM and TGA. It was found that anti-oxidization of the silver-coated copper powders increased with the increase of the silver content slightly and a dense coating surface was observed at Ag content of 53.9 wt%. Furthermore, the pastes with relatively low silver content which were prepared from silver-coated copper powders, displayed high conductivity similar to pure silver even after sintering in air. And their sintering properties were also investigated at different temperature in air atmosphere. The film exhibits good electrical properties at sintering temperature between 800 and 900 °C. When the paste from silver-coated copper powder with Ag content of 53.9 wt% was printed on Al2O3 substrate and sintered at 800 °C in air, the sheet resistance of the film is 0.036 Ω/□ only.