A Modeling Study of Electrical Characteristics of Anisotropic Conductive Film Adhesives

R. Divigalpitiya
3M Canada Company, London, ON, Canada
Published in 2008

Finite element analysis provides new insights into the electrical behavior of conducting adhesives. We show that at a contact between a spherical conducting particle and a flat conducting substrate the current distribution is non-uniform: the current is concentrated at the periphery of the contact. In practice, the current concentration has important implications.

We further shed light on what happens when a contact is contaminated with insulative debris. Finite element analysis using COMSOL Multiphysics and first principle calculations show that the contact resistance of coated particles is more immune to contaminants at the contact than solid metallic particles.