Silver metal is normally the material of choice when it comes to electrical and electronic applications, due to its high level of conductivity. However, cost is certainly the biggest barrier to its widespread use.
Silver-coated particles are naturally a viable alternative as, for many years, they have provided a way of capitalising on the prime property of silver metal for a fraction of the price.
When considering silver-coated metallic substrates, the drawback is that they have relatively high values of specific gravity – around 9 grams per cubic centimetre. Silver-coated aluminium and glass particles offer some advantage with gravities of around 3.0 and 2.6 respectively.
But the real breakthrough has come from the development of silver-coated hollow glass and hollow ceramic particles. With densities as low as 0.5 grams per cubic centimetre, conductive paths in non-conductive matrices can therefore be created with very low volume loadings of this type of particle.
Hart Materials is able to supply three grades of hollow silver-coated glass particles and three grades of hollow silver-coated ceramics. For more information, please contact us.