AI Chat Paper
Note: Please note that the following content is generated by AMiner AI. SciOpen does not take any responsibility related to this content.
{{lang === 'zh_CN' ? '文章概述' : 'Summary'}}
{{lang === 'en_US' ? '中' : 'Eng'}}
Chat more with AI
Powered by AMiner. Clicking this button will take you away from SciOpen.
Home Friction Article
PDF (2.4 MB)
Cite
EndNote(RIS) BibTeX
Collect
Submit Manuscript AI Chat Paper
Show Outline
Outline
Show full outline
Hide outline
Outline
Show full outline
Hide outline
Research Article | Open Access

Intermittent failure mechanism and stabilization of microscale electrical contact

Tianbao MA1,†( ), Zhiwei YU1,2,†, Aisheng SONG1, Jiahao ZHAO3,4,5, Haibo ZHANG6, Hongliang LU7,8, Dandan HAN3,4,5, Xueyan WANG7,8, Wenzhong WANG6
State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Inspur Beijing Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd., Beijing 100085, China
Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Innovation Center for Future Chips, Beijing 100084, China
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Beijing 100084, China
School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

† Tianbao MA and Zhiwei YU contributed equally to this work.

Show Author Information

Graphical Abstract

Abstract

The stability and lifetime of electrical contact pose a major challenge to the performance of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), such as MEMS switches. The microscopic failure mechanism of electrical contact still remains largely unclear. Here conductive atomic force microscopy with hot switching mode was adopted to simulate the asperity-level contact condition in a MEMS switch. Strong variation and fluctuation of current and adhesion force were observed during 10,000 repetitive cycles, exhibiting an "intermittent failure" characteristic. This fluctuation of electrical contact properties was attributed to insulative carbonaceous contaminants repetitively formed and removed at the contact spot, corresponding to degradation and reestablishment of electrical contact. When contaminant film was formed, the contact interface became "metal/carbonaceous adsorbates/metal" instead of direct metal/metal contact, leading to degradation of the electrical contact state. Furthermore, a system of iridium/graphene on ruthenium (Ir/GrRu) was proposed to avoid direct metal/metal contact, which stabilized the current fluctuation and decreased interfacial adhesion significantly. The existence of graphene enabled less adsorption of carbonaceous contaminants in ambient air and enhanced mechanical protection against the repetitive hot switching actions. This work opens an avenue for design and fabrication of microscale electrical contact system, especially by utilizing two-dimensional materials.

Keywords

atomic force microscopymicroscale electrical contactgraphene

References

[1]
Bian W, Zhao J H, You Z. Low voltage, high speed and small area in-plane MEMS switch. J Micromech Microeng 29(6): 065014 (2019)
Crossref Google Scholar
[2]
Streller F, Wabiszewski G E, Carpick R W. Next-generation nanoelectromechanical switch contact materials: a low-power mechanical alternative to fully electronic field-effect transistors. IEEE Nanotechnol Mag 9(1): 18–24 (2015)
Crossref Google Scholar
[3]
Yang F, Yang J, Qi Y B, de Boer M P, Carpick R W, Rappe A M, Srolovitz D J. Mechanochemical effects of adsorbates at nanoelectromechanical switch contacts. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 11(42): 39238–39247 (2019)
Crossref Google Scholar
[4]
Lee J O, Song Y H, Kim M W, Kang M H, Oh J S, Yang H H, Yoon J B. A sub-1-volt nanoelectromechanical switching device. Nat Nanotechnol 8(1): 36–40 (2013)
Crossref Google Scholar
[5]
Peschot A, Poulain C, Souchon F, Charvet P L, Bonifaci N, Lesaint O. Contact degradation due to material transfer in MEM switches. Microelectron Reliab 52(9–10): 2261–2266 (2012)
Crossref Google Scholar
[6]
Brand V, Baker M S, de Boer M P. Impact of contact materials and operating conditions on stability of micromechanical switches. Tribol Lett 51(3): 341–356 (2013)
Crossref Google Scholar
[7]
Liao M Z, Wu Z W, Du L J, Zhang T T, Wei Z, Zhu J Q, Yu H, Tang J, Gu L, Xing Y X, Yang R, Shi D X, Yao Y G, Zhang G Y. Twist angle-dependent conductivities across MoS2/graphene heterojunctions. Nat Commun 9: 4068 (2018)
Crossref Google Scholar
[8]
Cao L M, Zhou G H, Wang Q Q, Ang L K, Ang Y S. Two-dimensional van der Waals electrical contact to monolayer MoSi2N4. Appl Phys Lett 118(1): 013106 (2021)
Crossref Google Scholar
[9]
Li P, Jing G S, Zhang B, Sando S, Cui T H. Single-crystalline monolayer and multilayer graphene nano switches. Appl Phys Lett 104(11): 113110 (2014)
Crossref Google Scholar
[10]
Koren E, Leven I, Lortscher E, Knoll A, Hod O, Duerig U. Coherent commensurate electronic states at the interface between misoriented graphene layers. Nat Nanotechnol 11(9): 752–757 (2016)
Crossref Google Scholar
[11]
Chari T, Ribeiro-Palau R, Dean C R, Shepard K. Resistivity of rotated graphite-graphene contacts. Nano Lett 16(7): 4477–4482 (2016)
Crossref Google Scholar
[12]
Song A S, Shi R Y, Lu H L, Gao L, Li Q Y, Guo H, Liu Y M, Zhang J, Ma Y, Tan X, et al. Modeling atomic-scale electrical contact quality across two-dimensional interfaces. Nano Lett 19(6): 3654–3662 (2019)
Crossref Google Scholar
[13]
Yu Z W, Song A S, Sun L Z, Li Y L Z, Gao L, Peng H L, Ma T B, Liu Z F, Luo J B. Understanding interlayer contact conductance in twisted bilayer graphene. Small 16(15): 1902844 (2020)
Crossref Google Scholar
[14]
Vishnubhotla S B, Chen R M, Khanal S R, Li J, Stach E A, Martini A, Jacobs T D B. Quantitative measurement of contact area and electron transport across platinum nanocontacts for scanning probe microscopy and electrical nanodevices. Nanotechnology 30(4): 045705 (2019)
Crossref Google Scholar
[15]
Yu K M, Zou K, Lang H J, Peng Y T. Nanofriction characteristics of h-BN with electric field induced electrostatic interaction. Friction 9(6): 1492–1503 (2021)
Crossref Google Scholar
[16]
Vazirisereshk M R, Sumaiya S A, Martini A, Baykara M Z. Measurement of electrical contact resistance at nanoscale gold-graphite interfaces. Appl Phys Lett 115(9): 091602 (2019)
Crossref Google Scholar
[17]
Vazirisereshk M R, Sumaiya S A, Chen R M, Baykara M Z, Martini A. Time-dependent electrical contact resistance at the nanoscale. Tribol Lett 69(2): 50 (2021)
Crossref Google Scholar
[18]
Simmons J G. Generalized formula for the electric tunnel effect between similar electrodes separated by a thin insulating film. J Appl Phys 34(6): 1793–1803 (1963)
Crossref Google Scholar
[19]
Matthews N, Hagmann M J, Mayer A. Comment: “Generalized formula for the electric tunnel effect between similar electrodes separated by a thin insulating film”. J Appl Phys 123(13): 136101 (2018)
Crossref Google Scholar
[20]
Pan Y, Zhang H G, Shi D X, Sun J T, Du S X, Liu F, Gao H J. Highly ordered, millimeter-scale, continuous, single-crystalline graphene monolayer formed on Ru (0001). Adv Mater 21(27): 2777–2780 (2009)
Crossref Google Scholar
[21]
Shi R Y, Gao L, Lu H L, Li Q Y, Ma T B, Guo H, Du S X, Feng X Q, Zhang S, Liu Y M, Cheng P, Hu Y Z, Gao H J, Luo J B. Moire superlattice-level stick-slip instability originated from geometrically corrugated graphene on a strongly interacting substrate. 2D Mater 4(2): 025079 (2017)
Crossref Google Scholar
Friction
Volume 11 Issue 4,
April 2023
Pages 538-545
DOI: 10.1007/s40544-022-0613-x
Cite this article:
MA T, YU Z, SONG A, et al. Intermittent failure mechanism and stabilization of microscale electrical contact. Friction, 2023, 11(4): 538-545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-022-0613-x

664

Views

19

Downloads

9

Crossref

8

Web of Science

8

Scopus

0

CSCD

Altmetrics
Received: 10 February 2022
Revised: 21 February 2022
Accepted: 28 February 2022
Published: 16 March 2022
© The author(s) 2022.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Return