Phil Zarrow: This video is for anyone wondering about working with silver sintering materials. It will cover the roles of porosity and pressure.
Dr. Lee, why work with silver sintering materials?
Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee: This is because of currently the industry is moving to the higher power devices, including the high-speed train and also the converter, those kinds of things, and the conventional solder material no longer good enough, such as, high-lead solder or even other type of lead-free material. They are not good enough in terms of semiconductivity, electrical conductivity, and also service temperature. For all those reasons, silver's become a much better alternative to high-lead which no longer can do the job. This is why we work on the silver sintering material.
Phil Zarrow: Very good. There's a focus on low porosity. How does that fit in?
Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee: If you let the porosity happen in the joint, it defeats the purpose. Porosity doesn't provide electrical conductivity, doesn't provide the thermal conductivity, also doesn't provide good mechanical strength. Unless you take it out ... otherwise, your interconnect material is actually partially functional and partially reliable. That's why important to have a low porosity.
Phil Zarrow: How does pressure factor into the equation?
Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee: Pressureless is important in terms of the most manufacturing cost. When you need to have a pressure during the sintering process, the whole thing slows down. Before one batch is finished, you cannot do the next batch. The whole thing becomes fairly sluggish, and also equipment-wise, bonding is also expensive, unlike other costs. If you can allow the pressureless sintering process, you can send armies through the oven, and that's a very high throughput. This is why the pressureless is so important for the industry.
Phil Zarrow: Dr. Lee, where can we get more information on silver sintering materials?
Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee: Actually, on our website we have a bunch of information about it, showing you where you can get a better material, on that, and how they perform.
Phil Zarrow: Very good, and of course there's your blog and your excellent technical papers they can download.
Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee: We try our best.
Phil Zarrow: Dr. Lee, thank you very much.
Dr. Ning-Cheng Lee: Okay. You're welcome.
Keywords: Phil Zarrow, Dr Lee, silver sintering materials, low porosity, pressureless sintering, lead-free solder