Low Pressure and Short-Time Silver-Sintering for Power Modules

Silver-sintering has become one of the main chip interconnect technologies in wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor power modules due to its excellent thermal conductivity, high temperature stability and mechanical reliability. However, the traditional silver sintering process generally has the problems of long sintering time and high auxiliary pressure, which not only restricts the industrial production efficiency, but also may cause mechanical damage to the brittle chip. In this study, an innovative low-pressure and short-time silver sintering process, namely the Paste+Film method, was proposed and systematically verified. Through controlled experiments, the results showed that the Paste+Film method can achieve high-quality silver connections with a shear strength of more than 40MPa under the conditions of only applying a mild pressure of 5–10 MPa and shortening the sintering time to 3–5 minutes. In addition, the process was successfully applied to the packaging preparation of double-sided cooled SiC MOSFET half-bridge modules, and the overall sintering time was shortened by about 75% compared with the traditional method. Electrical testing and mechanical performance evaluation further verified the superiority of the Paste+Film process in ensuring chip structural integrity, improving process yield and material utilization, and provided a new path for achieving large-scale manufacturing of next-generation high-power density and high-reliability power modules.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Materials Science and Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Materials Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Chen, Yancheng

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Lu, Guo Quan

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Aning, Alexander O.
• Tao, Chenggang

• silver-sintering die-attach
• power electronics packaging
• silver-sintering paste
• silver-sintering film

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:44133

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/135436