The Effect of Lubricant on Electrical Connector’s Sliding Performance

Abstract

Keywords: electrical contact lubricant contact resistance sliding wear Abstract. The contacts must be reliable in the required life time under practical application. Reliability means that the contact resistance can maintain low and stable. Au-plated contact pairs have been used widely for weak current connectors due to its well electrical and anti-corrosion performance. The high price of gold forces manufacturers to reduce the thickness of Au-plated while maintaining well performance. Increasing thin of Au plating causes the microporosity to increase rapidly, which has harmful effect on the performance of connectors. Appropriate lubricant coated on contact pair is a solution to improve the contact property. This paper focuses on sliding contact performance of gold plated contact pairs coupon with 0.25 m thickness and lubricated with water based lubricant named lub-E under damp heat and corrosion environment respectively. The contact pairs are also exposed in damp heat, corrosion environment respectively to evaluate the anti contamination property. The sliding experiment is conducted at frequency of 1Hz, amplitude of 1cm, and load of 0.5N, 1.0N and 1.5N. Contact resistance data is gotten in every sliding cycle at the condition of DC current 100mA and limited voltage 1.0V. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is used to observe the sliding track morphology and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) is used to analyze the element.