Determining contact resistance at kelvin contact finger jointing by using finite element method
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Date
2019-05
Authors
Suraya Syafiqa Binti Husain
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Abstract
Kelvin contact finger is a device that is widely used in testing electronics components such as integrated circuits (ICs). It consists of two contacts per device lead, which are addressed as force finger and sense finger. The integrity of an IC can be analysed by jointing it on the pitch of the contact fingers. Theoretically, when a joint is formed by pressing two similar or dissimilar metallic materials together, only a fraction of the nominal surface area is actually in contact because of the non-flatness and the roughness of the contact surfaces. The limited contact area causes a rise in thermal and electrical contact resistance. The higher contact resistance can lead to a lower current carrying capacity, higher voltage drop and higher losses. This will eventually reduce the accuracy of the testing output. This project is carried out to determine the contact resistance due to different contact pressure at the contact finger jointing using finite element method. The modelling process is performed to represent the jointing of a fixed IC pin with a pair of force and sense fingers. The magnitude of the contact pressure are varied from 2.5 kPa to 12.5 kPa. A temperature rise analysis is conducted to study the relationship between the magnitude of current and the temperature rise on the model. Based on the results, the contact resistance is negatively correlated to the contact pressure with Pearson coefficient of -0.895, whereas the temperature rise is positively correlated to the magnitude of current with Pearson coefficient of 0.959.