Introduction
Nanofoil refers a multi-layer foil fabricated by vapor depositing thousands of alternating nanoscale layers of metals (Al, Ni, Au etc.). When the foil is activated by a small pulse of local energy from electrical, optical or thermal sources, it can occurs an exothermic reaction to raise the localized temperatures to 1500°C in thousandths of a second. Nanofoil is a predictable, controllable and affordable material that can produce an instantaneous heat source to melt adjoining solder layers, bonding two components together. Nanofoils can provides repeatable and reliable bonds and have been widely applied in many industry fields, including electronics, automobile, biomedical, aerospace and national defense industry.
Fig 1 Copper nanofoil
Application
Electronics assembly: Nanofoils are used to melt adjoining solder layers and bond components together in air and at room temperature instead of exposing components to reflow temperatures. The joining process is simple and can be completed in fractions of a second. Because of these advantages they have been utilized in the field of electronic assembly.
Reaction initiator: They can be designed as an initiator of two mutually reactive metals to deliver a broad range of reaction temperatures, reaction rates and reaction energies.
Energetics: Nanofoils are well-suited for energetics applications such as propellant ignition, munitions and circuit protection applications.
