Surface hydroxyl modification for silicate-stabilized low-melting glassy tellurite adhesive enabling low resistance of silver conductive paste

With the booming development of new electronic devices, the demand of high-end silver conductive paste has been sharply increased. In this study, we achieve low sheet resistance silver paste by using silicate stabilized glassy tellurite adhesive with hydrophobic surface through effective surface modification. We developed a wet milling process and employed lauryl gallate to remove surface hydroxyl content of micro-scale silicate-containing tellurite low-melting glasses. This surface modification can effectively prevent agglomeration caused by hydroxyl condensation, meanwhile eliminate defects of sintered silver layer. The introduction of silicate to tellurite glassy adhesive is used to improve water and alkaline resistance and corrode wafer surface to enhance its contact with silver. A sintered silver layer with low sheet resistance of 35.6 mΩ/□ was obtained, despite only 1–3 μm size silver particles are used and sintered at relatively low temperature around 500 °C. This research provides a practical path-forward of improving overall performance of metal conductive pastes from a new angle of innovating glassy adhesive.