Effective control of the heat generated from electronics and semiconductor devices requires a high thermal conductivity and a low thermal expansion coefficient appropriate for devices or modules. A method of reducing the thermal expansion coefficient of Cu has been suggested wherein a ceramic filler having a low thermal expansion coefficient is applied to Cu, which has high thermal conductivity. In this study, using pressureless sintering rather than costly pressure sintering, a polymer solution synthesis method was used to make nano-sized Cu powder for application to Cu matrix with an AlN filler. Due to the low sinterability, the sintered Cu prepared from commercial Cu powder included large pores inside the sintered bodies. A sintered Cu body with Zn, as a liquid phase sintering agent, was prepared by the polymer solution synthesis method for exclusion of pores, which affect thermal conductivity and thermal expansion. The pressureless sintered Cu bodies including Zn showed higher thermal conductivity (180 W/m·K) and lower thermal expansion coefficient (15.8×10−6/℃) than did the monolithic synthesized Cu sintered body.

Inkjet printing was successfully done using Cu nano powder ink after these Cu nano powders were dry-coated with 1-octanethiol for oxidation prevention. 1-octanethiol, which is Self-Assembled Multi-layers (SAMs), was coated approximately 10-nm thick on the surface of Cu nano powders. 1-Octanol, which has the same chain length as that for 1-octanethiol, was used as a solvent to make the ink for inkjet printing. As a result, the fabricated ink was dispersed for about 4 weeks, and after printing and heat treatment at for 4 hours, the resistivity for the printed pattern was measured to be .