Geometrical and electrical properties of LTCC and thick‐film microresistors

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This paper aims to present systematic studies of a wide spectrum of geometrical and electrical properties of thick-film and LTCC microresistors (with designed dimensions between 50 £ 50 mm 2 and 800 £ 200 mm 2 ). Design/methodology/approach -The geometrical parameters (average length, width and thickness, relations between designed and real dimensions, distribution of planar dimensions) are correlated with basic electrical properties of resistors (sheet resistance and its distribution, hot temperature coefficient of resistance and its distribution distribution) as well as long term thermal stability and durability of microresistors to short electrical pulses. Findings -Fodel process gives better resolution than standard screen-printing and leads to smaller dimensions than designed, smaller absolute error and better uniformity of planar sizes. Microresistors made in full Fodel process show much weaker dimensional effect and exhibit noticeably smaller distribution of basic electrical properties. Originality/value -Presents systematic studies of a wide spectrum of geometrical and electrical properties of thick-film and LTCC microresistors.

Fabrication and electrical properties of laser-shaped thick-film and LTCC microresistors

“…The ±15% resistance distribution is noted for laser-shaped structures. This distribution is much less in comparison with screen-printed microresistors and comparable with Fodel ones [5,6].…”

“…This means that ageing processes within resistor volume give smaller fractional resistance changes than those appearing at the resistor/conductor interface. Screen-printed resistors exhibit similar stability level under the same ageing conditions [6,15]. This suggests that laser affected zone, appearing during shaping is very small and can be neglected during analysis of electrical and stability properties for structures with resistor width larger than 150 lm.…”

“…for trimming of thick-film resistors [16] -more information about properties of such trimmed structures one can find in [15]. But investigations of pulse durability can help also to fix the critical electric field and next surface or volume power density for microresistors in dependence of resistor dimensions or pulse duration [6]. Voltage pulse exposures were realized with the aid of self made Programmed Pulse Generator [17].…”

“…The results obtained for laser-shaped microresistors were compared with previously investigated microresistors made by standard screen-printing or by using full Fodel process and experimental Fodel resistive ink [3,[5][6][7][8].…”

“…Unfortunately, only conductive and dielectric photosensitive inks are available as far. There are also experimental photosensitive resistive inks and in the literature one can find information about microresistors made from them [4][5][6] but these inks are still not commercially available. There are also other attempts to miniaturization of thick-film and LTCC resistors like combination of photopatterned contacts and screen-printed resistive film [7,8], application of microcontact printing [9] or substitution of array with two-terminal resistors by equivalent multicontact resistor [10].…”