This study is aimed at clarifying the mechanism of wear process for Ag plating. The samples of different hardness Ag plating on copper alloys were prepared as coupon and embossment specimens, which simulated terminal contacts. During the sliding test, the contact resistance and the friction coefficient versus sliding distance are measured. The surface observation and surface roughness of the Ag films after wear tests were investigated. As results, the hard Ag plating film (120 Hv) exhibited higher contact resistance comparing to the soft Ag plating film (80 Hv). The soft Ag film delivered wider wear trace on coupon specimens compared to the hard one. Moreover, the observation of tribofilms formed on the Ag films after wear tests suggested that a mixed-type of adhesive and abrasive wears occurred for both of soft and hard Ag films. Furthermore, the fretting corrosion resistance of Ag plating samples with different hardness was also investigated. As results, the wear resistance of hard Ag film was stronger than that of soft Ag film.

At the present time, as downsizing of connectors causes thin gold plated layer and low contact load, serious problem of degradation of contact resistance property is induced. For these contacts, corrosion of the contacts surface under environment and high temperature as soldering and reflow process should be existed. Oxidation of base metal atoms which are diffused from under layer and additives occurs. Contact resistance increases for both surface contamination and low contact load. In order to resolve these problems and wear of surface, application of contact lubricants is useful and effective. However, degradation of the lubricants under such reflow process as high temperature possibly occurs. Therefore, in this study, from view point of change of lubricant quality as viscosity, weight loss, polymerization, oxidation and molecular orientation were clarified. For increase in contact resistance, orientation of lubricant molecular acts as important factor was found. The other factors of the lubricant hardly does not effect on contact resistance.

Arc runners are fixed on silver electrical contacts. Break arcs are generated between the contacts in a 450VDC circuit. Break arcs are magnetically blown-out and air is blown to the break arcs. The air flow was not used to our previous reports with runners. Circuit current when contacts are closed is 10A. Flow rate of air Q is changed from 1 to 10L/min. Supply voltage E is changed from 200V to 450V. The following results are shown. Arc duration D tends to decrease with increasing flow rate Q. The number of reignitions N increases with increasing supply voltage E for each flow rate Q. The number of reignitions is the least when the flow rate Q is 2L/min.

Many DC commutator motors are widely used in automobiles. In recent years, as compact and high output DC motors have been developed due to advanced technology, the faster the rotational speed is required and the commutation arc causes a high rate of wear/erosion of brush and commutator. Therefore, it is important how the motor speed influences commutation phenomena such as arc duration, residual current and erosion and wear of commutator and brush in order to achieve high reliability and extensive lifespan. In this paper waveforms of commutation voltage and current are measured at the rotation speed of 1000 to 5000min^-1and the relation between rotation speed and arc duration / residual current is obtained. In addition long term tests are carried out at the rotation speed of 1000 to 5000min^-1 the change of arc duration and effective commutation period is examined during the test of 20hours. Further, brush wear is evaluated by the difference of brush length between before and after test. Consequently, it can be made clear that as the speed increases, the effective commutation period decreases and the arc duration is almost same at the speed up to 3000min^-1 and is around 42µsec.

Authors previously studied the degradation of electrical contacts under the condition of various external micro-oscillations. They also developed a micro-sliding mechanism (MSM2), which causes micro-sliding and is driven by a piezoelectric actuator and elastic hinges. Using the mechanism, experimental results were obtained on the minimal sliding amplitude (MSA) required to make the electrical resistance fluctuate under various conditions. In this paper, to develop a more realistic model of input waveform than the previous one, T_s/2 is set as the rising or falling time, T_c as the flat time, and τ/2 as the duration in a sliding period T (0.25 s) of the input waveform. Using the Duhamel's integral method and an optimization method, the physical parameters of natural angular frequency ω₀ (12000 s^-1), damping ratio ζ (0.05), and rising and falling time T_s (1.3 or 1.2 ms) are obtained. Using the parameters and the MSA, the total acceleration of the input TA (=f(t)) and the displacement of the output x(t) are also obtained using the Fourier series expansion method. The waveforms x(t) and the experimental results are similar to each other. If the effective mass m, which is defined as that of the movable parts in the MSM2, is 0.1 kg, each total force TF (=2mTA) is estimated from TA and m. By the TF, the cases for 0.3 N/pin as frictional force or in impulsive as input waveform are more serious than the others. It is essential for the safety and the confidence of electrical contacts to evaluate the input waveform and the frictional force. The ringing waveforms of the output displacements x(t) are calculated at smaller values of T_s (1.0, 0.5, and 0.0 ms) than the above values (1.3 or 1.2 ms). When T_s is slightly changed from 1.3 or 1.2 ms to 1.0 ms, the ringing amplitude is doubled. For the degradation of electrical contacts, it is essential that T_s is reduced in a rectangular and impulsive input. Finally, a very simple wear model comprising three stages (I, II, and III) is introduced in this paper. Because T_s is much shorter in a rectangular or impulsive input than in a sinusoidal input, it is considered that the former more easily causes wear than the latter owing to a larger frictional force. Taking the adhesive wear in Stages I and III into consideration, the wear is expected to be more severe in the case of small damped oscillations owing to the ringing phenomenon.

Break arcs are rotated with a radial magnetic field formed by a permanent magnet embedded in a fixed contact. The break arcs are generated in a 48VDC resistive circuit. The circuit current is 10A when the contacts are closed. The polarity of the fixed contact in which the magnet is embedded is changed. The rotational radius and the difference of position between the cathode and anode spots are investigated. The following results are obtained. The cathode spot is moved more easily than the anode spot by the radial magnetic field. The rotational radius of the break arcs is affected by the Lorentz force that is caused by the circumferential component of the arc current and the axial component of the magnetic field. The circumferential component of the arc current is caused by the difference of the positions of the rotating cathode and anode spots.

In this paper, we propose a novel gate delay time mismatch tolerant time-mode signal accumulator whose input and output are represented by a time difference of two digital signal transitions. Within the proposed accumulator, the accumulated value is stored as the time difference between the two pulses running around the same ring of a delay line, so that there is no mismatch between the periods of the two pulses, thus the output drift of the accumulator is suppressed in principle without calibrating mismatch of two rings, which is used to store the accumulated value in the conventional one. A prototype of the proposed accumulator was fabricated in 180nm CMOS. The accumulating operation is confirmed by both time and frequency domain experiments. The standard deviation of the error of the accumulating operation is 9.8ps, and compared with the previous work, the peak error over full-scale is reduced by 46% without calibrating the output drift.

This paper proposes a read-only memory driving circuit for RFID tags based on a-IGZO thin-film transistors. The circuit consists of a Johnson counter and monotype complementary gates. By utilizing complementary signals to drive a decoder based on monotype complementary gates, the propagation delay can be decreased and the redundant current can be reduced. The Johnson counter reduces the number of registers. The new circuit can effectively avoid glitch generation, and reduce circuit power consumption and delay.