Electrical characteristics of isotropic conductive adhesives (ICAs) for the fabrication of RFID inlays

Isotropic conductive adhesives (ICAs) have been used or considered as an interconnect material for radio frequency identification (RFID) inlays or other flip chip assemblies due to the advantages of having a low temperature and high-speed bonding. In this work, the curing properties of commercial ICAs for the RFID tag application and the signal transmission in conductive lines that contained the ICA joints were evaluated as a function of the degree of cure at 900 MHz frequency range. The ICAs showed adequate signal transmission only after the curing process passed over the critical time. It was also found that the insertion loss of signal was more dependent on the contact states of Ag fillers in the bondline in preference to the electrical resistance of the ICA itself.