Electrical Switching Using Compliant Metal Infiltrated Multi-Wall Nanotube Arrays

Abstract

The topology of conventional noble-metal-coated switch counterfaces creates modes of switch failure via fouling, arcing, and local melting when impacted. To avoid these failure phenomena, compliant conductive contact surfaces of vertically aligned multi-wall nanotube arrays grown on conductive substrates have been fabricated. Infiltration of the array by noble metal results in a robust compliant switch contact surface. Cyclic hot-switch testing of the nanotube based switch, via modified nano-indentation, results in performance surpassing conventional designs with stable resistance of 0.4Ω over 3000 cycles. Investigating the physical performance of the array shows the array is compacted less than 3% over the first 500 cycles with no observable compaction through the remaining cycles. The improvement in performance of the nanotube based switch is attributed to the ability for the compliant contact surface to conform to the probe tip geometry, increasing the effective contact surface area.

Plasma-Sputtered Growth of Ni-Pd Bimetallic Nanoparticles on Carbon Nanotubes for Toluene Sensing

“…Furthermore, functionalizing CNTs with metal nanoparticles generally leads to forming a composite material with higher strength, stiffness, and toughness, and with improved current carrying capabilities [17]. This synergy of CNTs and metal nanoparticle properties has pushed their application in catalysis, biological sensors, electronics, and energy storage devices [18][19][20][21][22].…”