An electrical contact resistance model including roughness effect for a rough MEMS switch

作者:Li, Longqiu*; Song, Wenping; Zhang, Guangyu; Jia, Dan
来源:Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 2012, 22(11): 115023.
DOI:10.1088/0960-1317/22/11/115023

摘要

Understanding the contact behavior of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switch is of great importance to reach a high-reliability level for micro-switch applications. The deformation occurring at the many a-spots produced by the mechanical contact of asperities can be elastic, elastic-plastic, fully plastic or any combination of the three types of deformation and has a strong effect on the contact resistance. This work presents an electrical contact resistance model for a rough MEMS switch. A dimensionless parameter k, which is a function of the electron mean free path and the roughness parameters of contacting surfaces, is introduced to identify the contact resistance. The results show that the dimensionless contact resistance is a strong function of the dimensionless contact load, the plasticity index psi and the parameter k. The theoretical results are in good agreement with some of the experimental results.

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