Temperature Cycling Study of Aerosol-Jet Printed Conductive Silver Traces in Printed Electronics

Abstract Aerosol-Jet Printing (AJP) provides a new method for electronic component manufacturing. Understanding the reliability of electronics printed using the AJP process is essential to take full advantage of this technology and realize its industrial potential. In the current study, we have designed and tested AJP printed samples and conducted failure analysis of those samples that have exhibited early failures. Failures first occurred in the short traces that connect the main traces to the silver pads, due to local stress-raisers caused by local geometric features in the printing geometry. Thermal-Mechanical Finite-Element-Modeling (FEM) has been performed to analyze the cyclic history of thermo-mechanical stress distribution and plastic strain distribution.