The authors have been investigating the deterioration process of Au-plated slip-ring and Ag-Pd brush system with lubricant to realize stable and long lifetime. Through the past tests, it can be made clear that lubricant is very important for long lifetime, and a simple model of the deterioration process was proposed. However, it is still an issue how the lubricant is deteriorated and also what the relation between lubricant deterioration and contact voltage behavior is. In this paper, the contact voltage waveforms were regularly recorded during the test, and analyzed to obtain the time change of peak voltage and standard deviation during one rotation. Based on these results, it is discussed what happens at the interface between ring and brush with the lubricant. And the following results are made clear. The fluctuation of voltage waveforms, especially peaks of pulse-like fluctuation more easily occurs for minus rings than for plus rings. Further, peak values of the pulse-like fluctuation rapidly decreases and disappear at lower rotation speed as mentioned in the previous works. In addition, each peaks of the pulse-like fluctuation is identified at each position of the ring periphery. From these results, it can be assumed that lubricant film exists between brush and ring surface and electric conduction is realized by tunnel effect. In other words, it can be made clear that the fluctuation would be caused by the lubricant layer, not only by the ring surface. Finally, an electric conduction model is proposed and the above results can be explained by this model.

Copper (Cu) electroless plating was conducted on planar and microstructured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates. In this study, organic thin films terminated with nitrogen (N)-containing groups, e.g. poly (dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate) brush (PDMAEMA), aminopropyl trimethoxysilane monolayer (APTES), and polydopamine (PDA) were used to anchor palladium (Pd) catalyst. While electroless plating was successfully promoted on all sample surfaces, PDMAEMA was found to achieve the best adhesion strength to the PDMS surfaces, compared to APTES- and PDA-covered PDMS substrates, due to covalent bonding, anchoring effects of polymer chains as well as high affinity of N atoms to Pd species. Our process was also successfully applied to the electroless plating of microstructured PDMS substrates.

This study is aimed at clarifying the mechanism of wear process for Ag plating. The samples of different hardness Ag plating on copper alloys were prepared as coupon and embossment specimens, which simulated terminal contacts. During the sliding test, the contact resistance and the friction coefficient versus sliding distance are measured. The surface observation and surface roughness of the Ag films after wear tests were investigated. As results, the hard Ag plating film (120 Hv) exhibited higher contact resistance comparing to the soft Ag plating film (80 Hv). The soft Ag film delivered wider wear trace on coupon specimens compared to the hard one. Moreover, the observation of tribofilms formed on the Ag films after wear tests suggested that a mixed-type of adhesive and abrasive wears occurred for both of soft and hard Ag films. Furthermore, the fretting corrosion resistance of Ag plating samples with different hardness was also investigated. As results, the wear resistance of hard Ag film was stronger than that of soft Ag film.

At the present time, as downsizing of connectors causes thin gold plated layer and low contact load, serious problem of degradation of contact resistance property is induced. For these contacts, corrosion of the contacts surface under environment and high temperature as soldering and reflow process should be existed. Oxidation of base metal atoms which are diffused from under layer and additives occurs. Contact resistance increases for both surface contamination and low contact load. In order to resolve these problems and wear of surface, application of contact lubricants is useful and effective. However, degradation of the lubricants under such reflow process as high temperature possibly occurs. Therefore, in this study, from view point of change of lubricant quality as viscosity, weight loss, polymerization, oxidation and molecular orientation were clarified. For increase in contact resistance, orientation of lubricant molecular acts as important factor was found. The other factors of the lubricant hardly does not effect on contact resistance.

CMOS amperometric sensors with a microelectrode array offer great potential for counting bacteria because of their low cost, compact size, and ease of use. This paper presents a current-integration-based CMOS amperometric sensor for high-sensitivity bacteria counting. It has a current integrator for noise reduction and reportedly the most large-scale microelectrode array (1024 × 1024). This proposed sensor can count the number of bacteria ranging from a single cell to approximately a million cells. A prototype chip was fabricated using two-poly three-metal (2P3M) 0.6-µm standard CMOS technology. A 7.6 × 7.1-mm2 chip operates from a 5V supply at 1.9mA. In addition, by using the prototype chip, we performed electrochemical measurement and partial 2D imaging of silicone through constant potential amperometry. The measurement results indicate that the proposed sensor chip was able to accurately readout redox current from the 1024 × 1024 sensor array.

In this paper, we present sub-1-V CMOS-based electrophoresis method for small-form-factor biomolecule manipulation that is contained in a microchip. This is the first time this type of device has been presented in the literature. By combining CMOS technology with electroless gold plating, the electrode pitch can be reduced and the required input voltage can be decreased to less than 1 V. We fabricated the CMOS electrophoresis chip in a cost-competitive 0.6 µm standard CMOS process. A sample/hold circuit in each cell is used to generate a constant output from an analog input. After forming gold electrodes using an electroless gold plating technique, we were able to manipulate red food coloring with a 0-0.7 V input voltage range. The results shows that the proposed CMOS chip is effective for electrophoresis-based manipulation.

Transparent organic light-emitting diodes (TOLEDs) were investigated with top electrode of indium-tin-oxide (ITO) by ion-plating method. High deposition rate of 4.4 nm/s was realized without plasma damage of under organic layer. In the TOLEDs with inverted structure, high transmittance of over 75% at 550 nm and bright emission of 1,850 and 1,410 cd/m2, from bottom and top side at 163 mA/cm2, respectively, were obtained.

The authors have been investigating degradation process of Au plated slip ring and Ag-Pd-Cu brush system. In almost all cases the lifetime of the sliding system ends, when Au plating layer is worn out, the ring surface is oxidized to be black in color and contact resistance becomes very high. Further, the lifetime is very short without lubricant. So, the lubricant is very effective to make the lifetime longer. However, even with lubricant the lifetime is varied from about 1000 hours to almost 7000 hours in the past experiments. It is an important issue how the lubricant works on the lifetime of the system. In this paper the effect of lubricant on the degradation process of contact resistance is focused on. In the past tests the lubricant is supplied only once before the test. In this test the lubricant is regularly supplied almost every 900 operation hours. Consequently, the operation more than 8000 hours is realized, which is the longest among tests so far. In addition the contact voltage drop increase gradually until 2600 hours and after that it stays almost constant around 70 mV. According to the Element Analysis after the test the Ni base plating layer is totally exposed in many tracks. It means that the Au plating layer is gradually worn out probably at the stage of increasing voltage drop. In the previous tests the lifetime ended even when the Ni plating layer remained. So, the reason of long operation in this test is guessed to be that the lubricant not only decreases wear of ring and brush, but also suppresses oxidation of the Ni layer.

In this report, Focused Ion Beam (FIB) -- SEM technique was applied to observe the tin plated fretting contacts. Spatial distributions of tin, tin oxide and so on have been confirmed quantitatively in two plating thickness of 1 and 5 µm.

Tin and its alloys have been applied for the plating of electrical contacts for low electrical power conditions. In particular, tin-plated contacts are widely used as connector contacts in automotive applications and as make-break contacts in keyboard switches. In the relationship between contact resistance (R) and contact load (W) for both solid and plated tin, singularities have been found. Previously established and well known theories on the deformation of contact interfaces cannot explain these singularities. In this study, to clarify these singularities, and to obtain a contact model explaining this phenomenon, contact traces for contact load were examined by SEM and STM. The obtained microscopic images indicated piling-up at the periphery of the contact area for both solid and plated tin. In this case the contact configuration comprised a platinum probe with a hemispherical tip surface and a flat tin surface for both solid and plated. When the probe was loaded, this tip of the probe sank into the soft tin surface owing to its lower hardness. In case of solid tin, the sinking of the probe surface into the tin surface causes piling-up around the periphery of the contact trace. In this deformation process, since the periphery of the indentation of the indented contact area severely slid against the surface of the platinum probe while applying a contact load, the contact resistance rapidly decreased with load. In this case, the center portion of the true contact area was not affected mechanically; thus, the surface film on the bottom portion of the deformed of the flat surface did not break down mechanically. On the other hand, in the case of a tin plated surface, similar piling up occurred; however, it was accompanied by scattering and separation of tin crystal grains from the surface. As a result of this process, a decrease in contact resistance similar to that for the solid tin occurred. Since the piling-up of the contact surface is a very important process in the application of connectors, the above-mentioned unusual characteristics were clarified in this study.

Electrical contacts are an important part of electrical circuits and many reliability problems are related to electrical contact failure. It is important to investigate the relationship between load and contact resistance which is an important factor of contact reliability. In this study, the effect of plated material and plated thickness on contact resistance was examined. The samples were constructed of a copper alloy with tin or silver plating. Contact configuration was hemispherical-flat contact. The contact resistance was measured by using a four-probe method with a load up to 40 N. The relation between indentation contact area (i.e. apparent contact area) and contact resistance was determined. As experimental results, the contact resistance depends on the indentation of the contact area. In the same contact area, tin-plated samples have higher resistance than those that are silver-plated due to their own resistivity. The constriction resistance of a plated layer, which depends on contact area, plated material and plated thickness, is analyzed by a theoretical solution, which is shown by R=Φρ /2a, using a surface resistance coefficient Φ . The theoretical results show almost good agreement with the experimental results. Thus, the indentation contact area (i.e. apparent contact area) is almost the same as the real contact area in this study.

Electrical contacts are the most important parts of electrical circuits, and many reliability problems of the circuits are related to contact failure. The contact resistance is one of the important factors for assessing connector reliability, and thus the prediction of contact resistance is essential to designing electrical terminals. In this study, embossments, each 1 mm to 3 mm in radius, were brought into contact with flat planes to simulate the point of contact on a terminal, and the contact resistance was measured using a four-probe method under a load up to 40 N. Copper alloy samples, each plated with tin or silver and having an embossment of 1 mm to 3 mm in radius, were used and the visually clear indentations resulting from the embossment to plane contact were measured to determine their areas. Since the contact resistance is dependent on the contact area, an FEM analysis must be carried out to determine the contact areas correctly. In this paper, an elasto-plastic FEM analysis was performed taking the plating layers into account, and a method was established to make precise determination of the contact areas for different shapes of contacts and loads. The resultant contact areas were used to calculate the contact resistance, which showed a good agreement with experimental results. It was established that the load-resistance curves can be predicted on the basis of the shapes of the contacts as well as plating.

Lightweight single-layer slotted waveguide array antennas are fabricated using plastic materials with metal-plating. A plastic material that has good heat-radiation properties is investigated. Three types of antennas are fabricated by milling, using ABS resin, heat-radiating plastic, and aluminum alloy. In measurements, all three types of antennas are confirmed to have almost the same VSWR and gain in the 25 GHz frequency band.

Mn1-xZnxFe2O4 thin films with various Zn contents, 300 nm in thickness, were synthesized on glass substrates directly by electroless plating in aqueous solution at 90 without a heat treatment. With XRD, SEM, VSM, the crystallographic structure, morphology of the films and the macroscopic magnetic properties were characterized. The Mn-Zn ferrite films have a single phase spinel structure and well-crystallized columnar grains grow perpendicularly to the substrate. The change of the coercivity is not consistent with that of the bulk materials. As the Zn content in the films increases, the value of Hc decreases firstly, and then increases. At x=0.5, the minimum value of Hc is 3.7 kA/m and the value of Ms is 419.6 kA/m. The hyperfine magnetic fields, cation occupations and the distribution of the magnetic moments in film plane were studied by the conversion electron Mossbauer spectroscopy (CEMS).

A press-fit connection is a solderless electrical connection technology, which utilizes the mechanical contact force generated between through-holes on a printed circuit board (PCB) and terminals with a width slightly larger than the through-hole diameter. This technology has been widely noted recently as a measure against the "Lead Free Requirement" of materials comprising electric/electronic devices, especially in the area of automobile connector. For the application of this technology to automobile connectors, we have to take into account the severe requirement, such as (1) the adaptation to wider through-hole diameter tolerance range and (2) the establishment of connection reliability for the various PCB surface treatments. As a result, we have determined the minimum and maximum contact forces satisfying the long term connection reliability and designed the terminal shape, which has been refined the N-shape cross section developed before, by using three dimensional finite element methods (FEM). Furthermore, we have developed a new type of hard tin plating on terminals, thus preventing the scraping-off of tin during the insertion process, that could result in a short-circuit on the PCB, for the Organic Solderability Preservative (OSP) treated PCB. The press-fit connector for the automobile airbag Electronic Control Units (ECUs) we developed has been able to transfer to the mass-production phase successfully from August 2005.

In recent years, there have been ever-increasing demands to miniaturize automotive connectors. However, because the contact force decreases as connectors are miniaturized further, fretting corrosion, which is a typical problem occurring with low-force electric contacts, is expected to become a more serious problem in future. This time we developed a new experimental device capable of controlling the contact load, fretting amplitude, fretting frequency, contact part temperature and humidity optionally. In this report, we used the design of experiments method, and quantitatively evaluated the extent of the influence of the expected factor (in terms of load, amplitude, and plating thickness, etc.) on the fretting phenomenon, which occurs in the tin plating of the connector terminal. Moreover, based on SEM examination, we analyzed the surface and cross section of the contact parts when degradation occurs, and considered the mechanism of the degradation.

An ink-jet head using a buckling diaphragm microactuator is described. The microactuator is composed of a silicon substrate, silicon dioxide insulator, nickel heater layer and electro-plated nickel diaphragm. All the edges of the diaphragm are fixed on the substrate and a narrow gap is formed between the diaphragm and the substrate. A nozzle plate is connected to the actuator by an adhesive spacer to get the ink-jet head. An ink chamber is formed by the surfaces of the diaphragm, the nozzle plate, and the side wall of the spacer. When the diaphragm is heated, thermally induced compressive stress causes the diaphragm to buckle rapidly and the diaphragm simultaneously deflects toward the nozzle plate. The deflection raises the pressure in the ink chamber and an ink droplet is then ejected through the nozzle. The head design was carried out using mechanical analysis of a buckling model, and heat transfer simulation. The diaphragm made from nickel is 300 µm diameter and 2 µm-thick. The narrow gap is 0.4 µm. The cathode current density in nickel sulphamate solution used for nickel electro-plating of the diaphragm was 20 mA/cm2. An ink droplet has been ejected with a velocity of 8 m/s while the ink-jet head is operated by heating the diaphragm with a current of 510 mA at 16.6 V for 10 µs at 1.8 kHz.

A thermally controlled magnetization actuator (TCMA) is proposed for micro-mechanical relays. It is actuated by changing the local magnetization of the structure by remote heating using a laser beam. It is fabricated by nickel surface micromachining (a fabrication technique using nickel electroplating). The optical power of the laser diode used to drive the TCMA is about 30 mW. The switching time of the microrelay was experimentally measured to be 10 ms, the same as that of a conventional mechanical relay. The contact force was calculated to be 20 µN, which can be improved by increasing the size of the TCMA.

A new electrostatic wobble motor design and fabrication method were proposed, and micromotors were successfully fabricated and operated. The advantages are (1) thicker structural size, resulting in larger torque, (2) simple and safe fabrication process and (3) needle-shaped bearing to support the rotor. Needle-shaped bearing used here is expected to have lower friction comparing with the existing motor, since the load is smaller for this kind of bearing structure. Two major sources of the load, electrostatic force and capillary force, were considered to prove this tendency. Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) film was employed as a solid lubricant for its bearing. The friction of DLC and that of ilicon-dioxide were compared by experiment.

This paper describes the effective countermeasures for exfoliation of large-sized ceramic capacitors, deterioration of dummy resistors and developement of a spark sensor with UVtrons at 300-500 kW transmitting stations. Cracks and exfoliation were found at the electrode of large-sized ceramic capacitors in the output circuit of the 500 kW transmitter. The exfoliation was caused by the temperature rise and the thermal fatigues at the electrode with the Nickel plating including Irons. A pure Nickel-plated electrode including no Irons and a new soldering method using disk-typed solder with a large adhesive area are employed in order to reduce the temperature rise. The temperature rise of the improved capacitor was 18 lower than the conventional one. Deterioration of ELEMA resistors of the 300 kW dummy antenna was discovered. The damage of the resistor was caused by the concentration of the electric current followed by the thermal stress cycle which made mechanical exhaustion at the electrode. Therefore, oval-shaped type resistors with much longer electric current path (20% up) to suppress the concentration of current flow and much slower temperature rise are newly developed. In case that sparks occurred at DC or RF high voltage impressed sections of the high power transmitting equipment, the discharged points could be seriously damaged by the transmitter energy itself. In orded to prevent this, a spark detector using UV (Ultra violet) trons is developed and installed at the matchign circuit of the 500 kW transmitter. Conventional UV sensors with only one UVtron could not detect feeble discharges and sparks with a duration time of less than 150 ms because of false outputs by the back ground noise. Since choosing three out of four UV trons system is employed, possibility producing a false output will be just one to 445 years theoretically. This means extremely reliable and sensitive spark detection system are constructed. These countermeasures have improved reliability of the transmitting equipment greatly. No damages have been found in the transmitters ever since.