Fretting behavior of gold plated contacts

Fretting contact behavior of gold plated contacts is described in the paper. The requirement for low and stable fretting contact resistance of contacts is to choose intermediate plating and surface coating reasonably. Fretting contact resistance of gold plated contacts with Ni intermediate plating belongs to "good" level (type I). The contacts with Ni-P intermediate plating belong to "intermediate" level (type 11). The contacts with no intermediate plating or with I'd intermediate plating belong to "bad" level (type III). Increasing gold plating thickness can improve the fretting resistance behavior. Fretting contact resistance is based on gold element atomic percentage or adhesive cover area of gold. The higher the gold atomic percentage is, the lower and stable the contact resistance reaches. When gold atomic percentage in fretting wear area at 15KeV accelerated voltage is higher than 15%, contact resistance is lower than 10m Omega. When gold atomic percentage value reduces to 5%, gold plating is worn through and fretting behavior is failed. Fretting contact behavior of gold plated contacts will degrade under the condition of real contaminated environment, since the corrosion products are formed and accumulated in fretting track.