Electrical Contact Reliability in a Magnetic MEMS Switch

Author

Vincent, M. ; Chiesi, L. ; Fourrier, J.C. ; Garnier, A. ; Grappe, B. ; Lapiere, C. ; Coutier, C. ; Samperio, A. ; Paineau, S. ; Houzë, F. ; Noël, S.

Author_Institution

Innovation Dept., Schneider Electr. Ind., Grenoble

fYear

2008

Firstpage

145

Lastpage

150

Abstract

This paper reports on the reliability issues encountered during the development of a dry ohmic switch fabricated in MEMS technology. Particularly, focus is made on electrical contact reliability. Contact degradation during hot switching tests has been noticed, and leads to switch lifetime limitation. In order to understand this phenomenon, characterizations have been performed on damaged switches and degradation modes have been cleary identified. Solutions have been implemented and finally the Schneider Electric MEMS switch is able to switch 5 V/1 mA loads for several millions of cycles and 14 V/10 mA loads for several 10⁴ of cycles.

Keywords

electrical contacts; magnetic switching; microswitches; reliability; Schneider switch; contact degradation; current 1 mA; current 10 mA; dry ohmic switch; electrical contact reliability; hot switching tests; magnetic MEMS switch; voltage 10 V; voltage 5 V; Contacts; Degradation; Gold; Isolation technology; Micromechanical devices; Microswitches; Oxidation; Surface cleaning; Surface contamination; Switches;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electrical Contacts, 2008. Proceedings of the 54th IEEE Holm Conference on

Conference_Location

Orlando, FL

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1901-2

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-1902-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HOLM.2008.ECP.36

Filename

4694937