Simulation of the thermal behavior of a conductive adhesive

The conductive adhesive material studied is composed with spheres of a polymer core covered with a nanometric thickness of silver and embedded in a polymer matrix. As the spheres are covered with metal of high thermal conductivity, an easy model has been developed based on the thermal resistance network method. Results have been compared with finite element method (FEM) simulations; only for cylinders - i.e. for a 2D problem - from now. The difference induced by the easy modelling compared to FEM simulation is less than 10%. Five different configurations of cylinder arrangement within the matrix were studied. Results have shown that the cylinder configuration is a key parameter to determine the thermal properties of the adhesive.