Effects of Temperature and Particle Orientation on the Electrical Conductivity of Heterogeneous Contact Materials

Konferenz: ICEC 2014 - The 27th International Conference on Electrical Contacts
22.06.2014 - 26.06.2014 in Dresden, Deutschland

Tagungsband: ICEC 2014

Seiten: 6Sprache: EnglischTyp: PDF

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Autoren:
Crandall, E. R.; Behrens, V.; Schreiber, J.; Honig, T. (Doduco GmbH, Pforzheim, Germany)

Inhalt:
Elevated temperatures in switching devices for power engineering becomes more of a concern as the demand for size reduction continues while the rated current increases. One of the major requirements for the contact material used in maintaining a steady desired current is a good, stable electrical conductivity, which yields to a predictable behavior at elevated temperatures. In order to evaluate the influence of increasing temperature on the behavior of contact materials’ electrical conductivity, various materials (silver (Ag), silver/tungsten (Ag/W), silver/nickel (Ag/Ni), and silver/graphite (Ag/C)) were investigated including the particle orientation affects parallel and perpendicular to the contact surface. All materials were studied within temperature ranges of room temperature to 900deg C and all observations were carried out in appropriate environments where oxidation does not occur. This paper describes the measurement setup, presents and discusses results, and compares them to the literature.