A finite element based electrical resistance study of rough surfaces: applied to a bi-layered Au/MWCNT composite for micro-switching applications

Liu, Hong and McBride, John (2016) A finite element based electrical resistance study of rough surfaces: applied to a bi-layered Au/MWCNT composite for micro-switching applications. In 2016 IEEE 62nd Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts (Holm). IEEE. pp. 65-71 . (doi:10.1109/HOLM.2016.7780009).

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

A gold coated multi-walled carbon nanotube (Au/MWCNT) composite has been used as a surface material in electrical contacts to improve the lifetime of micro-switches. A modified nano-indentation setup, with a 2 mm-diameter gold coated stainless steel probe making contact with the Au/MWCNT composite, has been used to investigate the electrical behavior of the composite. The contact forces are ranged from 0.2 mN to 2 mN. A finite element (FE) contact model is developed, linked to the nano-indentation tests. The composite is modeled as a bi-layered structure, and surface roughness is included in the modeling. The contact area is calculated from the modeling. The effective resistivity for the surface is used to determine the contact resistance, using the Holm equation. The calculated force-resistances are based on a number of assumptions and show the same trend as the experimental results.

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