Effect of Zn-powder content on the property of Cu/SAC0307 powder/Cu joint under ultrasonic assisted at low temperature

Purpose Low-Ag SAC solder will lead to a series of problems, such as increased the melting range and declined the solderability and so on. These research studies do not have too much impact on the improvement of solders’ performance but were difficult to achieve satisfactory results. It is urgent to develop new soldering technology to avoid the bottleneck of lead-free solder. low-temperature-stirring soldering and ultrasonic-assisted soldering was developed in the authors’ early work, but slag inclusion and pore would gather and grow up to lead decreasing of the shear strength. In this paper, Cu/SAC0307 +Zn power/Cu joints with ultrasonic-assisted at low-temperature was successfully achieved. Design/methodology/approach 45um Zn-powder and SAC0307 No.4 solder powder were mixed to fill the Cu-Cu joint, and the content of Zn-powder were 0 and 5%, 7.5% and 10%, 12.5% and 15% respectively. During the soldering process under ambient atmosphere %252C the heating platform provided a constant 220%253 F and the ultrasonic vibrator applied a constant pressure of 4 MPa to the copper substrate. The soldering process was completed after holding 70 s at 300 W. Findings The Zn particles made the IMC at the joint interface and in the soldering seam from scallop-type Cu6Sn5 to flat-type Cu5Zn8. The shear strength of joints without Zn was only 12.43 MPa, the shear strength of joints with 10% Zn reached a peak of 34.25 MPa, and the shear strength of joints containing 10% Zn was 63.71% higher than that of joints without zinc particles, and then the shear strength decreased. In addition, with the increase of zinc content, the fracture mode of the joint changed from the brittle fracture of the original layered tears to the mixed tough and brittle fracture. Originality/value A new method that Zn micron-size powders and SAC0307 micron-size powders was mixed to fill the joint, and successfully achieved micro-joining of Cu/Cu under ultrasonic-assisted without flux at low-temperature.