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Low-stress design of bonding structure and its thermal shock performance (− 50 to 250 °C) in SiC/DBC power die-attached modules

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Abstract

Low-stress design of bonding technology with a sandwich structure of sintered Ag and tungsten (W) thin film was developed for SiC power die-attached modules. The die-attached bonding layer was designed as sintered Ag/W/sintered Ag structure. Experiment results show that the initial bonding strength was larger than 65 MPa for this die-attached structure and larger than 35 MPa with a thermal shock test from − 50 to 250 °C for 1000 cycles. These results are largely better than that almost all sintering Ag technology reported in previous studies. Furthermore, the sandwich structure also compared with the sintered Ag structure which just using sintered Ag paste as bonding layer. The thickness of Ag paste is set as 100, 200 and 500 µm in the sintered Ag structure. The results show that the initial bonding strength of sintered Ag structure was about 60–70% of the value of W sandwich structure and about one-third of that after 1000 cycles. X-ray and SEM observation revealed that sandwich structure significantly decreased the size of crack extension in the sintered Ag layer during the thermal shock test. Finite element analysis reveal that the shear stress at the pore location of sandwich structure decreased to almost half values of the sintered Ag structure with the thickness of sintered Ag of 500 µm, and decreased almost 20% compared with the thickness of sintered Ag of 100 µm. The bonding technology with the W sandwich structure should be an attractive for low stress design in SiC power die-attached modules, which significantly increased its function for long-term high temperature applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the JST Advanced Low Carbon Technology Research and Development Program (ALCA) project “Development of a high frequency GaN power module package technology” (Grant No. JPMJAL1610). The authors thank Mr. Aiji Suetake for his help in the experiment and also thankful to the Network Joint Research Centre for Materials and Devices, Dynamic Alliance for Open Innovation Bridging Human, Environment and Materials.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University, Mihogaoka 8-1, Ibaraki, Osaka, 567-0047, Japan

    Chuantong Chen, Chanyang Choe, Zheng Zhang, Dongjin Kim & Katsuaki Suganuma

  2. Division of Adaptive Systems, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2-1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan

    Chanyang Choe, Zheng Zhang & Dongjin Kim

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  1. Chuantong Chen
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Correspondence to Chuantong Chen.

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Chen, C., Choe, C., Zhang, Z. et al. Low-stress design of bonding structure and its thermal shock performance (− 50 to 250 °C) in SiC/DBC power die-attached modules. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 29, 14335–14346 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-018-9568-0

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