Recent development on the modeling of electrical contact

Abstract

Contact problems account for 40 percent of all electrical/electronic failures, ranging from small scale consumer electronic devices to large scale military and aerospace systems. This paper summarizes recent development on the theory of bulk contact and thin-film contacts, whose contact members may possess vastly different electrical resistivities. Current crowding at the rim of an electrode, scaling laws for contact resistance in a general geometry, and the novel relation between AC bulk contact resistance and DC thin film contact resistance are addressed.