Investigation of the short-time high-current behavior of vias manufactured in hybrid thick-film technology

In this contribution, the short-time high-current behavior of electrical interconnects (through-metalized vias) manufactured in thick-film technology is investigated. Such vias are reliable devices for small currents, but their behavior when high currents are applied for short times has not been fully understood. Therefore, in a four-wire-setup, short-time high-current pulses were applied to single vias and the resulting transient voltage drops were measured. Furthermore, an FEM-model was developed to simulate this voltage drops as well as the time-dependent temperature distributions inside of the vias. Input parameters were material properties and sample geometries. The good agreement between the measured and the simulated time-dependent voltage drops validated the model. The resulting temperature distributions are an appropriate engineering tool for the further development of vias with respect to reliability and high ampacity.