Effect of glass content variation on properties of photoimageable silver conductor paste

In our pursuit to unravel the materials aspects of photoimageable thick film pastes, we herein furnish a preliminary account of preparation and allied characterization of aqueous developable photoimageable silver conductor paste as a function of weight percentage of glass frit binder. This photoimageable paste is comprised of submicron sized silver powder, micron sized lead borosilicate glass frit, epoxy acrylate resin with pendant –COOH group and 2,2′-dimethoxy-2-phenyl acetophenone. The weight percentage of lead borosilicate glass frit is varied from 0 to 10 maintaining the inorganic to organic ratio of 72:28 while formulating the paste. We have adopted physicochemical techniques such as TGA/DTA, SEM/EDAX and sheet resistance measurement to arrive at optimized weight percentage of glass yielding the desired line/space resolution, minimal line shrinkage, better adherence and expected sheet resistance.