Optimization of Silver Powder Production through Factorial Experimentation

High purity silver powders are a key building block for the production of conductive pastes and adhesives used by the microelectronics industry to manufacture a wide variety of products, such as sophisticated semiconductor packages, flexible membrane touch switches, RFID antennae, the rapidly growing photovoltaic/solar cell marketplace, printed electronic (PE) applications, etc. The physical properties of the powder, especially apparent density and specific surface area are critical to performance and quality in these products. Through a series of factorial experiments, Metalor has been able to understand and mathematically model the effects of key process parameters that control physical properties of the powder they supply to their microelectronics customers. In particular, estimating interaction effects was important to the success of our project. This paper describes the design and analysis of these experiments as well as the implementation of the results which led to a 2X improvement in product quality and process control in our precipitation processes.