Evolution of Voltage Transients During the Switching of a MEMS Relay With Au/MWCNT Contacts

Gold is commonly used for microelectromechanical electrical contacts due to its desirable electrical and mechanical properties; however, the lifetime of gold contacts is limited, particularly in the case of hot switching. To improve the lifetime of electrical contacts, we have developed a gold-coated multiwalled carbon nanotube bilayer composite. Experiments with these composites have shown that the switching dynamics vary over the lifetime of the switch. The change in potential across the switch contacts during the contact-break process, referred to as the transient opening voltage, has been monitored at a number of intervals throughout the switch life. The transient opening voltage shows behavior indicative of the molten metal bridge (MMB) phenomenon. While stable for most of the contact lifetime, the duration of this behavior increases sharply as the contacts approach failure. Throughout the switch lifetime, the contacts are required to survive a large number of opening and closing cycles and, therefore, it is important to understand the switching dynamics. A contact pair was investigated to failure where the experimental conditions were: load current and voltage of 50 mA and 4 V, respectively. Failure occurred after 28 million hot-switched cycles. The average energy of the MMB process was evaluated as 1.54 μJ per opening event during the stable region, this rose to 13.2 μJ shortly before failure. An experiment run under similar conditions but with a lower load current of 10 mA, which was switched for over 500 million cycles, showed a stable contact resistance and an average MMB energy of 5 Ω and 57 nJ, respectively.