Metal-polymer composites for molded interconnect devices (MID)

The market constantly demands the extension of the functional features of electronic devices and this leads to the application of new materials. Polymers represent an innovative potential due to their favorable properties for packaging. The MID technology represents a new growing potential in the electronic packaging (Forschungsvereinigung and Feldmann, 2004). Metal-polymer bonds are the key issue for this technology. For the quality and reliability of a metal-polymer component the adhesive strength of the metal-polymer composite is a critical factor. Normally, it is usual to pretreat either the polymer or the metal surface by physical or chemical methods to promote strong interactions between metal and polymer. Among the various pretreatment processes the plasma modification of the polymer surface wins a key position (Friedrich et al., 2002). Reactions between plasma species and polymer surface make it possible to form polar groups on the polymer surface. Polar chemical groups like C-OH, CO, CHO, COOH are reactive chemically, can form chemical bonds and therefore can cause an increase of the surface energy and the wetting quality. This work deals with investigation results of the adhesion between polyamide 6 and polyamide 6.6 and typical of MID Technology metals like copper and silver. The following procedure shows the methods and opportunities for the improvement and characterization of the metal-polymer adhesion.