Abstract
The stability and lifetime of electrical contact pose a major challenge to the performance of microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS), such as MEMS switches. The microscopic failure mechanism of electrical contact still remains largely unclear. Here conductive atomic force microscopy with hot switching mode was adopted to simulate the asperity-level contact condition in a MEMS switch. Strong variation and fluctuation of current and adhesion force were observed during 10,000 repetitive cycles, exhibiting an “intermittent failure” characteristic. This fluctuation of electrical contact properties was attributed to insulative carbonaceous contaminants repetitively formed and removed at the contact spot, corresponding to degradation and reestablishment of electrical contact. When contaminant film was formed, the contact interface became “metal/carbonaceous adsorbates/metal” instead of direct metal/metal contact, leading to degradation of the electrical contact state. Furthermore, a system of iridium/graphene on ruthenium (Ir/GrRu) was proposed to avoid direct metal/metal contact, which stabilized the current fluctuation and decreased interfacial adhesion significantly. The existence of graphene enabled less adsorption of carbonaceous contaminants in ambient air and enhanced mechanical protection against the repetitive hot switching actions. This work opens an avenue for design and fabrication of microscale electrical contact system, especially by utilizing two-dimensional materials.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11890671, 61774096, and 51935006), National Science and Technology Major Project (2017-VII-0013-0110), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
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Tianbao MA. He received his bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China in 2003, and Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2007. He is an associate professor and vice director of State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University. His research areas include fundamentals of friction, superlubricity, etc. He has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed journal articles in related fields.
Zhiwei YU. He received his bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2016. Then he was a Ph.D. student in the State Key Laboratory of Tribology at the same university. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering at Tsinghua University in 2021. Now he is a system on chip (SoC) development engineer of Inspur Beijing Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd. His research interests include microelectromechanical systems and micro/nano electrical contacts.
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Ma, T., Yu, Z., Song, A. et al. Intermittent failure mechanism and stabilization of microscale electrical contact. Friction 11, 538–545 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-022-0613-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-022-0613-x