Study on the Performance of Insulating Substrate Based on Silver Sintering

The reliability and stability of the insulating substrate are crucial for the service lifetime of high-power electronic devices. In this study, silver sintered copper (SSC) substrate was fabricated with silver paste as the bonding material, and its reliability was evaluated through simulations and experiments compared with the direct bonding copper (DBC) substrate. Under temperature cycling (−40 °C–125 °C), the stress distribution and changes of the SSC substrate and the DBC substrate are simulated by the finite element method. Further experimental tests were carried out to compare the shear strength and interfacial bonding rate of the two substrates. The results indicate that compared with DBC substrate, the stress of the SSC substrate is largely reduced, and the maximum stress is not at the vertices of the substrate. Moreover, the degradation of shear strength and interfacial connection rate of SSC substrate are much lower than that of DBC substrate. The SSC substrate has better reliability than the DBC substrate.