An Overview of the Thick Film Copper Technology for Power Electronics

This paper is focused on thick film copper technology which is used for power electronic substrate manufacturing. This technology is based on the printing of copper pastes on ceramic substrates and can be used as an alternative solution to conventional metallization techniques for the realization of power electronic substrates. Many experiments regarding the optimization and verification of electrical and mechanical parameters of single-layer and multilayer copper films on Al2O3 and AlN substrates were performed. This paper contains a description of experiments and achieved electrical and mechanical parameters of single-layer or multilayer copper structures such as adhesion, electrical and thermal conductivity, resistivity, solderability and density etc. The paper also describes the interaction between copper films and Al2O3 or AlN substrates which has an influence on the electrical parameters of the whole substrate and also includes design rules for both single and multilayer copper to help properly design the final power substrate.