The effects of increasing filler loading on the contact resistivity of interconnects based on silver-epoxied conductive adhesives and silver metallization pastes

Our previous work highlighted how microscopic structural effects influence the sheet and contact resistance of electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs). Herein, we delve further by investigating how the contact and bulk resistivity of several ECAs that are based on the same formulation, but with different filler content, are correlated with the filler content. Additionally, two different filler geometries - high and low surface area (HSA and LSA) fillers - are combined in different ratios to maintain a similar viscosity and therefore processability. Hence, contact and bulk resistivities are also correlated with the different geometry ratios of these two fillers. As expected, it was found that the contact and bulk resistivities decreased when the filler content was increased. However, the magnitude of the decrease was found to depend strongly on the filler geometry ratio. At extreme filler geometry ratios, when the bulk is either mostly loaded with HSA-fillers or mostly with LSA-fillers, the impact of changes in the filler content on the bulk and contact resistivities is markedly different. The measured data is interpreted within the context of percolation theory and it is determined that the optimum ratio of the LSA and HSA Ag-fillers investigated in this study is approximately 60:40 (for an epoxy-based adhesive). This work has important ramifications for the design of ECAs, where cost considerations and the need to reduce silver resource usage demand the lowest (silver) filler content, but the demands of product performance point to higher filler content. This study using electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs) contacting solar cell metallization pastes shows that the impact of silver content on the bulk (adhesive) resistivity and (bond) contact resistivity depends on the conductive particle geometry. By mixing high and low surface area (to volume ratio) particles, it is found that both resistivities strongly depend on the particle ratio. Hence, developers can reduce silver content with minimal loss of performance by focusing on optimizing particle shape and ratio in multimodal compositions. image