Modern trends in contact material development

Developments in contact materials in recent years have been mainly devoted to improvements in quality of contact and in contact performance. These improvements take into account the importance of different properties for different applications. For low-level contacts the most important property remains the contact resistance; for connector contacts, and other contacts which remain closed for long periods the value of the contact resistance is of less importance than the requirement for unchanged contact resistance over the working life; for contacts used in power engineering the major requirements are for low arc erosion and anti-welding properties at high currents. Means of achieving this are discussed