Experimental Investigation of Laser Spot Welding of Ni and Au-Sn-Ni Alloy

Many microelectronic devices are miniaturizing the capacitance density and the size of the capacitor. Along with this miniaturization of electronic circuits, tantalum (Ta) capacitors have been on the market due to its large demands worldwide and advantages such as high volumetric efficiency, low temperature coefficient of capacitance, high stability and reliability. During a tantalum capacitor manufacturing process, arc welding has been used to weld base frame and sub frame. This arc welding may have limitations since the downsizing of the weldment depends on the size of welding electrode and the contact time may prevent from improving productivity. Therefore, to solve these problems, this study applies laser spot welding to weld nickel (Ni) and Au-Sn-Ni alloy using CW IR fiber laser with lap joint geometry. All laser parameters are fixed and the only control variable is laser irradiance time. Four different shapes, such as no melting upper workpiece, asymmetric spherical-shaped weldment, symmetric weldment, and, excessive weldment, are observed. This shape may be due to different temperature distribution and flow pattern during the laser spot cutting.