A new copper based hermetic sealing material: A comparison with AgCu28GeCo0.3

For vacuum brazing applications Hermetic Sealing Materials (HSM) with low partial pressure are widely used to join copper or stainless steel parts. For joining copper AgCu28 is a widespread material, which is well characterized and investigated. For stainless steel, AgCu28Ge2Co0.3 is commonly used if the same brazing temperature as AgCu28 is required. Umicore Technical Materials has developed a new copper-based HSM. The tensile strength of the stainless steel joints on stainless steel is comparable to AgCu28Ge2Co0.3 and the wettability is significantly improved. In this article, the physical properties of the alloy and its brazed joints will be presented in comparison to AgCu28GeCo0.3. However, today the silver content of HSMs is more in focus than in the past decades, because it has the biggest impact on the material prices. To accommodate this trend the total silver content of the new HSM is reduced by almost 44 %.