Sliding contacts on printed circuit boards and wear behavior

Abstract

Automotive suppliers use since decades printed circuit boards (PCB) gold plating pads, as direct contact interface for low current sliding contacts. Several gold plating processes are available on the market, providing various wear behaviour. Some specific galvanic hard gold (AuCo or AuNi). plating was developed on PCB's. This specific plating generates extra costs due to the material quantity and also the process complexity. In a cost driven industry, the challenge is to use a standard low cost PCB for systems requesting high reliability performances. After a brief overview of standard PCB manufacturing processes and especially gold plating processes, the global experimental results of wear behaviour of three different gold plating technologies will be exposed and an explanation of the correlation between surface key parameters and wear out will be provided.