SPS Co-Sintering Of Metal-Ceramic Composites For High Performance Electronic Applications

Electronic packages and sensors for special purpose applications demands the use of high electrical resistivity ceramics and conductive metallic materials which are sometimes difficult to be compatibilized, and whose manufacturing process involves many different processing steps. In this study, a bi-material composite consisting on a resistive SiC-Feldspar ceramic with around 10⁹Ω.cm and a conductive Invar36 alloy has been developed in a one-step process by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). The SPS process permits the fast co-sintering of the composite achieving near full densities. Also, it has been observed that the joining interface of the material is stable and crack free. Both selected ceramic and metallic materials have low and similar CTE values (3.5 ppm/K), which makes them ideal for co-processing purposes and also for applications where high dimensional stability is required.