Electrically conductive adhesives for demanding temperature cycling environment with water immersions

Electrically conductive adhesives are versatile attachment materials offering benefits for many applications in industrial electronics. However, the stability of these materials is typically less than that of metals and ceramics, thus their suitability for demanding environments must be carefully studied. In this paper the performance of anisotropically conductive adhesive (ACA) attachments was studied in a demanding environment combining both high temperature cycling and water immersions. Real-time measurements were conducted during testing. Significant differences between the ACA materials were seen. Promising results were obtained with some of the ACA materials studied, emphasising the importance of material choice. Cracking in the ACA interconnections could be seen in some of the samples studied for failure analysis. However, it remained unclear whether the cracks were the reason for the failures during testing.