Heating and reliability characteristics of electrically conductive adhesives using variable frequency microwave cure

Microwave(MW) as heating source to cure polymer and polymer based composites can significantly speed up the curing process. Electrically conductive adhesive(ECA) however excludes the use of MW because metal particles contained inside the ECA will cause arcing as exposed to MW. A new technique named Variable Frequency Microwave (VFMW) has been recently developed, with which arcing caused by the presence of metal can be avoid, thus a rapid process for curing ECA is available with use of this technique. In this paper, several kinds of electrically conductive adhesives were cured with VFMW, the heating rates as a function of the polymer materieal, the percentage of the metal particles in the ECAs, the effect of geometric size and shape of the metal particles, as well as the physical parameters of the VFMW are reported. Then the reliability testing was conducted to analyze the reliability of the conductive adhesive joint under VFMW curing condition.