Growth mechanism of intermetallic compounds and damping properties of Sn-Ag-Cu-1Â wt% nano-ZrO2 composite solders

Mechanical properties i.e., shear strength, hardness and high temperature/mechanical damping characteristics were successfully investigated. The experimental results showed that composite solder joints exhibited higher hardness and shear strength as compared to the plain Sn-Ag-Cu solder joints. In addition, composite solder containing ZrO2 nano-particles exhibited lower damping capacity as compared with plain Sn-Ag-Cu solder due to fine microstructure and uniformly distributed ZrO2 nano-particles which increase the dislocation density.