Measurements on stationary metal contacts under high charge injection rates

In the real world even the simplest of electrical circuits may exhibit unpredictable behaviour and it seems that the theory of chaos touches all disciplines. In this work, the operation of switch contacts is investigated under high charge injection conditions. It is experimentally shown that the I-V curves traced across industrial switches may exhibit bifurcation and nonlinear characteristics within a 50 Hz cycle of applied sinusoidal current. Charge injection through activated MIM microcontacts around the effective contact area, temperature instabilities, or even additional scattering mechanisms developing beyond a current density threshold, are some of the most possible physical effects which may induce chaotic nature onset in commonly used switch contacts. Temperature stability criteria are theoretically investigated, while the additional physical parameters, e.g. mechanical pressure across the interface, are experimentally studied