A review of recent developments in fretting studies in electricalcontacts is presented, focusing on developments in conductingpolymer surfaces. Fretting is known to be a major cause of contactdeterioration and failure; commonly exhibited as the contactresistance increases from a few milliohms, in the case of a newmetallic contacts, to in excess of several ohms for exposed contacts.Two technologies are discussed; firstly extrinsically conductingpolymer (ECP), where highly conductive interconnects are formedusing metallized particles embedded within a high temperaturepolymer compound, and secondly; intrinsically conducting polymers(ICPs) are discussed. These latter surfaces are new developmentswhich are beginning to show potential for the application discussed.This paper presents the work on the ICPs using poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT /PSS) andits blends from secondary doping of dimethylformamide (DMF)PEDOT/PSS. Two different processing techniques namely dropcoating and spin coating have been employed to develop test samplesand their functionality were assessed by two independent studies oftemperature and fretting motion. The review leads to a number ofrecommendations for further studies into the application of conductingpolymers for contacts with micro-movement.
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