Tanaka Holdings announces that the manufacturing business of the Tanaka Precious Metals, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo, has successfully developed CDF-10, a cadmium-free electrical contact material used primarily in vehicles and smartphones with improved sliding wear resistance. It has developed a system of mass production and started full-scale operations on December 1st
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Background to development of clad materials for electrical contacts
One type of electrical contact material, clad material, uses a different high electrical conductivity contact metal bonded only to the points of contact on a comparatively inexpensive base metal. Clad material enables reduced amounts of contact metal, which functions sufficiently at a thickness of a few dozen microns at the contact points. So clad electrical contacts are an inexpensive material while also having high sliding wear resistance.
In the contact materials market, precious metals have been essential materials for clad material contact points used in components that demand high reliability, such as automotive air conditioner damper motors, with silver-copper-nickel alloys (AgCuNi). In 1993, Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo developed CDF-2 for this market, as a modified AgCuNi alloy with improved sliding wear resistance, and it is currently one of Tanaka’s core electrical contact products, alongside AgCuNi. However, with even higher market requirements over recent years, development of even longer-life, inexpensive products have become an issue for the company.
- Properties of CDF-10 cadmium-free clad material for electrical contacts
The main component of this successfully developed CDF-10 is AgCuNi, to which fine 1-2um deposited particles have been added to control adhesive wear during sliding. The sliding wear rate of CDF-10 is one-fifth that of AgCuNi and one-half that of CDF-2, and when applied at the same thickness, it achieves more than twice the life of either. In other words, CDF-10 enables the same performance to be maintained at half the current thickness, meeting customer needs for thinner contact materials. This technology enables cost reductions of about 20-40% for customers developing products that use clad material for electrical contacts.
