Electrical and morphological properties of conducting layers formed from the silver–glass composite conducting powders prepared by spray pyrolysis

Abstract

Ag–glass composite powders with various glass contents and excellent conducting properties were prepared by spray pyrolysis. Irrespective of the glass content, all the prepared powders were found to comprise spherical particles with nonaggregation characteristics. The crystal structure of the powder particles resembled that of pure Ag particles, irrespective of the glass content. Conducting layers formed from pure Ag did not melt even when sintered at 400 °C. On the other hand, conducting layers formed from composite powders containing 3 and 5 wt% glass melted when sintered at 400 °C. The optimum glass content of the composite powders was 3 wt% at sintering temperatures of 400 and 450 °C. However, the optimum glass content decreased to 1 wt% when the sintering temperature was increased to 550 °C. The lowest specific resistances of the conducting layers formed from the composite powders were 5.3 and 2.3 μΩ-cm at sintering temperatures of 400 and 550 °C, respectively.