Near zero shrinkage of an low-temperature Co-fired ceramic package by constrained sintering using screen printed alumina paste

Conventional free sintering of low-temperature co-firing ceramic (LTCC) technology has several merits such as sintering temperature below 1000°C that enables co-firing with electrode materials of silver or copper metal and multilayer structure formation. But due to the free sintering process, large shrinkage occurs. To fabricate electronic devices and components with near zero shrinkage within x, y directions constrained sintering (CS) technology is required. In this study a constrained sintering paste (CSP) utilizing alumina powder, which has a higher sintering temperature than LTCC powders, was fabricated for CS technology. The effect of CSP formulated using alumina powder on shrinkage was studied according to variation in paste composition. As a result ceramic package structure with a cavity was fabricated with shrinkage control of 0.028%, which is far smaller than the current CS technology shrinkage of approximately 0.1%.