We propose a new electric contact device for arc discharge suppression. The functions of conventional electric contacts are categorized into energizing switch contacts and transient current switch contacts. A capacitor is connected in series to a transient current switch. Suppression of power consumption and arc discharge at breaking contacts are proposed, experimentally measured, and theoretically analyzed. The transient V-I characteristics at breaking contacts are controlled by the transient current switch and the capacitor. The transient responses at contacts were numerically derived by SPICE, and the energizing switch contacts voltage could be controlled to less than the minimum arc voltage. Using 2 conventional relays, no arc ignition at breaking contacts was confirmed for 50 V/25 A.

We proposed a new electric contact device that suppresses the arc phenomena. The functions of electric contacts are divided into energizing and switching for arc suppression. Switching contacts consist of multielectrodes and each electrode current is suppressed by the series resistance. For realization of multicontacting, cantilever beam array electrodes were formed on a silicon substrate using micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. The finite element method was used to optimize the structure. The fabrication process of the cantilever was examined. Au-Au contact current of 0.97 A was broken without arc ignition.

Arc occurrence rates are measured for Ag and Pd contacts operated in a DC resistive load circuit. Based on the obtained results, it is confirmed that arc certainly occurs at current levels lower than the conventional minimum arc current value for each of the tested contact materials. Arc occurrence rate in general comes close to 100% at the conventional minimum arc current level. Accordingly, careful attention should be paid to use of the term "minimum arc current" in order to avoid misinterpretation thereof.

The electrostatic discharge (ESD) effect in GMR heads in the deshunting process is studied in order to prevent the damage in this process. The simulation and experiment results are investigated and compared. It is found from these results that sequences of deshunting process, currently operating, can cause the damage of GMR heads due to the ESD effect, based on the charged device model, CDM. This also shows that the voltage across GMR head, as the tweezers is used, can be raised up to 3.7 V which is about harmful to damage the head. Examples of damage heads confirmed by the SEM are also shown.

New diode structures without the field-oxide boundary across the p/n junction for ESD protection are proposed. A NMOS (PMOS) is especially inserted into the diode structure to form the NMOS-bounded (PMOS-bounded) diode, which is used to block the field oxide isolation across the p/n junction in the diode structure. The proposed N(P)MOS-bounded diodes can provide more efficient ESD protection to the internal circuits, as compared to the other diode structures. The N(P)MOS-bounded diodes can be used in the I/O ESD protection circuits, power-rail ESD clamp circuits, and the ESD conduction cells between the separated power lines. From the experimental results, the human-body-model ESD level of ESD protection circuit with the proposed N(P)MOS-bounded diodes is greater than 8 kV in a 0.35-µm CMOS process.

Breaking arcs occurring between Ag or Cu electrical contact pairs in DC 56 V/7 A resistive circuit are observed with a high-speed camera (1000 frames/s). As a result, the increase of brightness of the arc-emitted light synchronizes with the increase of arc current in the latter half of arc duration. For the case of Ag contacts, the brightness increases in entire region of the breaking arc with sudden increase of the arc current. On the other hand, the increase of the intensity for Cu contacts occurs in not only entire discharge region but also anode spot region significantly.

At current interruption by electric contact, a repetition phenomenon of arc extinction and re-ignition is often observed before complete extinction of arc discharge, in some cases for a long time and in other cases for a short time. Occasionally, no re-ignition is observed. From a viewpoint of arc duration, the period of this repeating arc is also an important factor, if it is very long. However, the conventional explanation about the contact arc duration excludes this repeating arc phenomenon so that it fails to explain the reason and the duration of this phenomenon. For the purpose of investigating why this phenomenon occurs and how long it lasts, the arc extinction current and the arc re-ignition voltage have been measured for tungsten electrode, palladium electrode, copper electrode, and silver electrode. The circuit is, for simplicity, resistive with a capacitor source voltage and a fixed short arc gap of 0.5 mm. Taking newly into account the idea of unstable arc region by the measured results, the conventional explanation was improved. As a result, the reason and the duration of arc extinction and re-ignition phenomenon have become understandable. For simplification, the main description is based on the results by tungsten electrode. The results by other electrodes are summarized in appendix.

A new scheme for evaluation of shapes of pips and craters formed by arc discharges on electrical contact surfaces is proposed. Measuring a height of a pip or a depth of a crater as well as an average diameter thereof with a scanning laser microscope and then putting a plot having the measured values as its vertical and horizontal coordinates enable us to numerically and briefly evaluate shapes of those pips and craters on arc-damaged contact surfaces. Some exemplary results obtained by this evaluation scheme are presented here.

The vacuum arc root properties (temperature, current density, radius of an arc root, fraction of current density carried by electrons, evaporation rate etc.) of graphite and copper are calculated with the cathode-fall voltage as parameter and the arc root properties of graphite are compared with that of copper. Especially, there is big difference between the evaporation rate of graphite and that of copper. This reason is thought that the thermal conductivity of graphite is low and its evaporating temperature is high.

An experimental equation of V-I characteristics of breaking arc was investigated in the air at atmospheric pressure. Material of the contact pair is Ag, Au, Cu and Ni. Supply voltage is set to 42, 48 and 54 V. The electrical resistance of experimental circuit is 5 Ω. The time evolutions of arc voltage, arc current and gap length were measured, simultaneously. V-I characteristics were obtained from those measured values. The dependence of the arc voltage on the gap length was represented by an approximate formula as a straight line in order to obtain the experimental equation. And the dependence of the strength of electric field of arc column on the supply voltage was approximated to a straight line. Using these approximate formulae, the experimental equation of the dependence of the arc voltage on the arc current was obtained with the gap length as a parameter. It was shown that the experimental equation agreed with experimental data in the experimental conditions for each contact material.

This paper describes an analysis of the electromagnetic interference (EMI) aspects of electrostatic discharge (ESD), which sometimes causes serious damage to electrical systems. To classify EMI-related properties resulting from ESD events, we used a self-organizing neural network, which can map high-dimensional data into simple geometric relationships on a low-dimensional display. Also, to clarify the effect of a high-speed moving discharge, we generated one-shot discharges repeatedly and measured the ESD current in the time domain to obtain its EMI-related characteristics of this phenomenon. Based on the measured data, we examined several differential properties of ESD waveforms including the maximum amplitude and energy level, and analyzed these multi-dimensional data using the self-organizing neural network scheme. The results showed that the high-speed moving discharges can increase the maximum amplitude, relative energy, and entropy of ESD events, and that the positioning of the EMI level of each ESD event can be effectively visualized in a two-dimensional space.

A LiNbO3 piezoelectric actuator controls the Au-Au contact gap. The control accuracy of the actuator is within the sub-micron range. Contact voltage, contact current, displacement of electrodes and driving voltage of the actuator were continuously and synchronously recorded by an A/D converter and send to a computer. The measured oscillograph data for 1500 contact operation were processed by the computer. Factors of discharge and bridge phenomena were derived at a contact operation. The delay time between displacement and driving signal of the actuator increased when one side of electric contact were vibrated. The resonance was seen in the actuator, and the dependency to the current and the amplitude was seen.

AgCdO12wt% contacts mounted on electromagnetic relays are tested in a DC 42 V-8.4 A resistive circuit as make-only contacts and break-only contacts. In this experiment, the arc duration has been measured for each operation and the shape of the transferred pip on each contact has been observed using photograph records taken every 1000 operations. The transferred pip grows markedly at make-only contacts. Furthermore, as a few samples with the long arc duration have the flat hill transferred from the cathode on the anode surface of break-only contacts, we believe that the transferred direction reverses at a certain arc length.

This paper presents an effective approach for estimating of the load matching conditions for dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) load. By the simulation method proposed here, optimal working frequency and optimal applied voltage for driving of DBD load can be calculated. Estimation results for the DBD ultraviolet generation lamp as a load of series resonant inverter are presented here, together with their evaluations.

A new low-voltage, all-in-one ESD (electrostatic discharging) protection circuit was designed. One such ESD protection unit is enough to protect each I/O pad against ESD stresses of all modes, i.e., from I/O to power supply and ground positively and negatively. This novel ESD circuit features adjustable trigger-voltage, i.e., 5 V to 60 V, with low turn-on threshold down to 5 V, symmetric active discharging channels in all directions, fast response time of 0.1 to 0.3 ns, and high ESD performance/area ratio of greater than 80 V per micrometer width. It was implemented in commercial BiCMOS technologies and achieved 14 kV human body model (HBM) and 15 kV air-gap IEC ESD protection levels. This compact ESD structure can not only provide adequate ESD protection, but also minimize the ESD-induced parasitic effects, which makes it a suitable ESD protection solution for mixed-signal and RF ICs in very deep sub-micron regime.

This paper proposes an LDMOSFET (Lateral Double-diffused MOSFET) that has the robustness against the hardest ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) requirement for automobile ECUs (Electronic Control Units) of discharging 25 kV 150 pF through 150 ohm 1 µH without external protecting circuits. The basic idea to achieve this is to add a novel discharge circuit to an LDMOSFET, which turns on when Human Body Model (HBM) type ESD is applied, and to consume the discharge energy in SOA (Safe Operating Area) in the LDMOSFET, avoiding localized current crowding of a parasitic bipolar transistor which causes the conventional ESD device failure. First, dynamics of current crowding when a grounded gate LDMOSFET is exposed to ESD stress is described by means of a circuit level SPICE simulation on a parallel distributed device model. Then a novel ESD turn-on LDMOSFET with a discharge MOSFET is proposed, which has ESD robustness of 25 kV. Finally the ESD measurements of the new device are shown to be in good accordance with estimation and to satisfy the target.

Low luminous efficacy is one of the major drawbacks of PDPs, with the discharge being the predominant limiting factor. Numeric simulations granting deeper insight in the core processes of the discharge are presented and the key parameters influencing the plasma efficiency are examined.

Even in today's industries that are predominated by solid-state switching devices, electromechanical devices with electrical contacts are still widely used for switching and/or conveying electrical signals and power. In this paper, some interesting topics in the investigation of electrical contacts, which were selected mainly from those presented at recently held international conferences or submitted to the related Transactions of IEEE and IEICE, are introduced. Specifically, some topics related to investigation regarding contact materials, new techniques for evaluating electrical contact phenomena, new understanding of the contact phenomena, and new applications of electrical contacts are briefly explained.

In this paper, the distributions of two spectral intensities along the axis of an arc column of the breaking arc are measured by using a combination of a CCD color camera and an additional filter, and arc temperature and metal-vapor quantity are calculated, when copper electrodes interrupt circuits of dc 50 V/3.3 A and 5.0 A. As results; The spectral intensities of excited copper atoms are the strongest near the cathode and become weaker with distance from the cathode in the small number of breaking arcs. The spectral intensities become strong near the anode in the large number of breaking arcs. The average arc temperature in the cross-section of an arc column is high near both the cathode and the anode, and the temperature distribution in the cross-section of the arc column is high at the axis of the arc column, and the arc temperature along the axis of the arc column is high near both the cathode and the anode. The metal-vapor quantity is low near both the cathode and the anode, and it is much at the center of the arc column.

A circuit-level electrothermal simulator, MICS (MItsubishi Circuit Simulator), is presented with parasitic bipolar transistor action and lattice heating taken into account. Diffusion capacitance in parasitic bipolar transistors is introduced to cover turn-on behavior under short rise-time current. Device temperatures are simulated from calculated electrical characteristics and the closed-form solution of the heat transfer equation. Simulation results show that this tool is valuable in evaluating electrostatic discharge (ESD) robustness in integrated circuits (ICs).