An Experimental Study of Transient Liquid Phase Bonding of the Ternary Ag-Au-Cu System Using Differential Scanning Calorimetry

An experimental approach using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been applied to quantify the solid/liquid interface kinetics during the isothermal solidification stage of transient liquid phase (TLP) bonding in an Ag-Au-Cu ternary alloy solid/liquid diffusion couple. Eutectic Ag-Au-Cu foil interlayers were coupled with pure Ag base metal to study the effects of two solutes on interface motion. Experimental effects involving baseline shift and primary solidification contribute to a systematic underestimation of the fraction of liquid remaining. A temperature program has been used to quantify and correct these effects. The experimental results show a linear relationship between the interface position and the square root of the isothermal hold time. The shifting tie line composition at the interface has been shown to affect the DSC results; however, the impact on the calculated interface kinetics has been shown to be minimal in this case. This work has increased the knowledge of isothermal solidification in ternary alloy systems and developed accurate experimental methods to characterize these processes, which is valuable for designing TLP bonding schedules.