Investigation of electrical properties of contacts made of materials based on sintered nano-Ag particles

In this paper preliminary investigations of electrical properties of new Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs´) are presented and discussed. Investigated TIMs are based on mixture of silver flakes and silver nano-particles (nano-Ag) with high content of silver (more than 90% weight). After curing and sintering of such materials, as a result, a bulk, homogenous silver layer with good electrical and mechanical properties is formed. This makes those materials suitable for high-power electronics since both thermal and electrical conductivity of the bulk silver is very high (429 W·m^-1·K^-1). What makes investigated materials very valuable is a relatively low temperature of sintering process (typ. 120-150°C).