Fabrication of Ag micro-particles based on stress-induced migration by using multilayered structure with artificial holes array

Silver micro/nanomaterials have attracted a great deal of attention due to their superior physicochemical properties. The atomic migration driven by electromigration or stress-induced migration has been demonstrated to be a promising method for the fabrication of metallic micro-/nanomaterials because of the advantage of simple processing. However, how to realize the controllable fabrication and mass production is still the critical technical problem for the method to be used in large-scale industrial applications. In this paper, the multilayered samples consisted of copper foil substrate, Ti adhesive layer, Ag film, and TiN passivation layer and with arrays of artificial holes on the passivation layer were applied to prepare arrays of Ag micro-particles. For the purpose of controllable fabrication, stress-induced migration experiments combined with finite element simulation were applied to analyze the influence of the passivation layer thickness and the heating temperature on the atom migration and Ag particles growing behavior. And the relationship between size of the fabricated Ag particles and the processing parameters of stress-induced migration experiments were also investigated. As a result, a proper structure size of the multilayered samples and heating temperature were recommended, which can be used for the Ag micro-particles controllable fabrication and mass production.