Wettability of Ag nanocluster on Cu-Ni alloys: A computational approach

DH Chung and H Guk and SH Choi and D Kim, JOURNAL OF ALLOYS AND COMPOUNDS, 682, 844-849 (2016).

DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2016.05.066

The conductive pastes containing Ag particles are used for patterning the electrodes of electronic devices such as solar cells and touch screen panels. Although Cu@Ag type metal particles have been tried as a substitute instead of Ag for cost reduction, the dewetting of Ag from Cu core during the processes has limited the use of Cu as a core metal. In this work, to investigate the Cu-Ni alloys as the core metal, we analyze the surface structures of Cu-Ni alloys and measure the compatibility between Ag and Cu-Ni alloys as wells as Cu and Ni by calculating the contact angles of Ag droplet on the metal surfaces using molecular dynamics simulations. As the Ni content of Cu-Ni alloys increases, the contact angle decreases: the contact angles for Cu, Cu3Ni, CuNi, CuNi3, and Ni are 69.6, 52.6, 50.5, 45.1, and 8.9 degrees, respectively. Therefore, the wettability of Ag on the Cu-Ni alloys is improved with the Ni content in the Cu-Ni alloys. This result indicates that the Cu-Ni alloys could be good candidates as the core metal to be used in the metal particles for the conductive pastes. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Return to Publications page