Computational analysis model of intense pulsed sintering of silver nanoparticles

Abstract

Intense pulsed light sintering uses a high-power pulsed xenon lamp to release large amounts of energy and promote the growth of sintered necks between nanoparticles in additive manufacturing. However, the process results in poor stability of the sintering effect on conductive patterns and easily damages the target materials. An analysis model was developed in this study to investigate the mechanism of intense pulsed sintering. The sintering process was divided into pre-sintering and formal sintering. In pre-sintering, the conductive pattern is described by the porous volatilization model based on Darcy's fluid equation to calculate the solvent phase change volatilization state, whereas a multi-scale analysis model was established for the formal sintering process. First, a molecular dynamics model was used to analyze the sintering state of nano-silver clusters in a variable temperature field to calculate the time-varying parameters. Second, from a finite element model, the intense pulsed sintering temperature field was constructed for different sintering parameters and applied to the two-phase flow model of sintering nano-silver particles to calculate the sintering process state of nano-silver particles. The relationship between the intense pulsed sintering parameters and the sintering state was revealed, thus providing a reliable theoretical basis for the sintering process to improve sintering stability.