KR101879477B1 - Method for manufacturing electric contact - Google Patents

Abstract

(A) melting a contact material comprising silver (Ag) and a first metal to cast a first billet; (b) extruding the first billet to form a wire; (c) cutting the wire to form a chip; (d) oxidizing the chip to form an Ag alloy chip including the first metal oxide, and casting the second billet using a silver alloy chip and a silver (Ag) chip, ; (e) extruding and rolling the second billet to form a first alloy sheet; And (f) bonding the first alloy plate to the second metal plate (A).
In the present invention, by controlling the internal oxidation time and conditions during internal oxidation of a chip, it is possible to control the distribution of oxides within the electrical contacts, and at the same time, workability can be ensured.

Description

[0001] METHOD FOR MANUFACTURING ELECTRIC CONTACT [0002]

The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a silver / silver alloy based electrical contact.

Conventional electrical contact manufacturing methods are manufactured through melting process ⇒ casting process ⇒ compression process ⇒ extrusion process ⇒ cutting process ⇒ post-oxidation process. The electrical contacts manufactured through this post-oxidation process are not uniform in oxide, .

When the oxide is formed by the post-oxidation process as described above, the oxide is not uniformly formed inside the electrical contact but is formed in close contact with the joint surface of the upper layer and the lower layer, or is formed unevenly along the crystal grains. Such non-uniformly formed oxides cause cracks in the electrical contacts, thereby reducing the reliability of the produced electrical contacts. In order to prevent this, an electrical contact is manufactured by a pre-oxidation method. In such an electrical contact manufactured by the pre-oxidation method, the workability is deteriorated due to the increase of the oxide content.

Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2011-0054625

The present invention relates to a new manufacturing method of an electrical contact capable of securing processability by adjusting the degree of internal oxidation in a chip state in order to solve a deterioration in workability which is necessarily caused in manufacturing a front oxidation contact, The present invention also provides an electrical contact manufactured by the method.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, comprising the steps of: (a) melting a contact material comprising silver (Ag) and a first metal to cast a first billet; (b) extruding the first billet to form a wire; (c) cutting the wire to form a chip; (d) oxidizing the chip to form an Ag alloy chip including the first metal oxide, and casting the second billet using a silver alloy chip and a silver (Ag) chip, ; (e) extruding and rolling the second billet to form a first alloy sheet; And (f) bonding the first alloy plate and the second metal plate (A) to each other.

The first metal in step (a) may be at least one selected from the group consisting of cadmium (Cd), tin (Sn), indium (In), and nickel (Ni) It is preferably 20 wt% or more based on 100 wt% of the first billet.

According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, in the step (d), the oxidation step may be carried out at 650 to 800 ° C for 3 to 24 hours under an oxygen atmosphere.

According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, in the step (d), the second billet casting step is a step of casting a silver alloy chip (Ag alloy chip) containing a first metal oxide by oxidation into a metal mold And then applying a pressure of 160 to 180 kgf / cm < ² > to cast the second billet.

According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the step (d) includes the steps of: (d-1) annealing the second billet; And (d-2) performing the cold compression, hot compression, or both of the annealed second billets.

According to another preferred embodiment of the present invention, the step (f) may be a step of surface-activating the first alloy plate and the second metal plate by a plasma treatment, followed by bonding them by heating and rolling.

According to the present invention, when the electrical contacts are manufactured, the formed chips are pre-oxidized to cast the second billets, and then the electrical contacts are manufactured using the second billets. Thus, the electrical contacts having the oxide uniformly distributed can be manufactured.

Since the electrical contact material of the present invention having an oxide uniformly distributed is excellent in durability and reliability, it can be usefully used as a contact material in various fields. In addition, it is possible to control the particle distribution of the oxide through the internal oxidation conditions and ensure the workability.

1 is a cross-sectional FE-SEM image of the electrical contact prepared in Example 1. Fig.
2 is a cross-sectional FE-SEM image of the electrical contact prepared in Example 2. Fig.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention is directed to a novel manufacturing method for manufacturing an electrical contact by applying a pre-internal oxidation but uniformly forming and distributing oxides in the electrical contact.

Conventionally, when the internal oxidation time increases during the manufacture of electrical contacts, the workability is lowered due to the lowering of the elongation and the increase of the brittleness.

Accordingly, in the present invention, when the internal oxidation of the chip is controlled, the internal oxidation time and the internal oxidation condition are controlled to appropriately control the oxide distribution in the electrical contact, thereby ensuring excellent processability of the electrical contact . In the present invention, it is also possible to control the oxide content of the high oxide contact material by controlling the internal oxidation time.

≪ Manufacturing method of electrical contact >

Hereinafter, a method of manufacturing an electrical contact according to the present invention will be described. However, the present invention is not limited to the following production methods, and the steps of each process may be modified or optionally mixed as required.

In one preferred embodiment of the method for manufacturing the electrical contact, (a) melting a contact material comprising silver (Ag) and a first metal to cast a first billet; (b) extruding the first billet to form a wire; (c) cutting the wire to form a chip; (d) oxidizing the chip to form an Ag alloy chip including the first metal oxide, and casting the second billet using a silver alloy chip and a silver (Ag) chip, ; (e) extruding and rolling the second billet to form a first alloy sheet; And (f) bonding the first alloy plate to the second metal plate (A).

Hereinafter, the manufacturing method will be described separately for each process step as follows.

(a) First billet casting (hereinafter referred to as 'S1 step')

First, a first billet is cast using a contact material containing silver (Ag) and a first metal.

More specifically, after a composition of a contact material containing silver (Ag) as a main component and containing a first metal is designed, the metal is melted by melting it into a melting furnace, and then poured into a mold to cast a first billet.

Here, the casting means that the molten material is made into a billet, which is a metal ingot in a form that can be easily extruded later. At this time, the billet may be a square piece having a rectangular cross-section of 160 mm or less and a cross-sectional area of 25,600 or less, or a small-sized piece.

The first metal may be selected from the group consisting of cadmium (Cd), tin (Sn), indium (In), and nickel (Ni), as long as it is a contact material capable of forming a silver- Or more. The content of the first metal is preferably 20% by weight or more, more preferably 20 to 40% by weight based on 100% by weight of the first billet.

(b) Wire forming (hereinafter referred to as "S2 step")

In this step S2, the cast billet is extruded to form a wire.

Here, the diameter of the wire to be formed is not particularly limited, and for example, it is preferably 1 to 3Φ.

In addition, a method of forming the wire is not particularly limited in the step S2. For example, the first billet and the metal mold for wire forming are preheated at 500 to 600 DEG C, and then the first billet is injected into the metal mold, / Cm < 2 > to form a wire.

(c) Chip molding (hereinafter referred to as 'S3 step')

The wire formed in step S2 is cut to form a chip. The reason for such a small cutting is to make the internal oxidation uniform and allow the internal oxidation to be completed in a short time.

The length of the chip to be formed here can be appropriately adjusted within the conventional range known in the art, and is preferably 1 to 3 mm, for example.

When a second billet, which will be described later, is cast through the oxidation process after forming a chip as described above, it is possible to cast a second billet having a uniform distribution of the first metal oxide.

(d) oxidation and second billet casting (hereinafter referred to as 'S4 step'),

In step S4, the formed chip is subjected to an internal oxidation process to form an oxide, and then the second billet is cast using the oxidized chip.

The oxidation step has the purpose of allowing oxygen to enter into the metal through heating under a high-pressure oxygen atmosphere to be solidified. As described above, the inner oxidized metal material forms an oxide, and becomes an electrical contact material material having improved electrical and mechanical life as compared with a metal material before internal oxidation.

That is, since silver (Ag) is difficult to oxidize, in the case of the Ag alloy electrical contact material, it is subjected to a process called 'internal oxidation'. This internal oxidation means that elements such as Cd, Sn, and In are selectively oxidized in the Ag with high affinity for oxidation when an intimate atmosphere of oxidation is formed under specific conditions (high temperature and high pressure). In the case of an electrical contact, this oxide layer is volatilized and absorbs the arc heat generated when opening and closing, which is an important point for performing the role of a contact. At this time, internal oxidation is referred to as pre-oxidation in which internal oxidation is performed after the product is processed according to the oxidation method, and after the internal oxidation and internal oxidation are performed, the product is processed into a product form. In the present invention, an electrical contact is manufactured by a pre-oxidation method.

In this case, the conditions for oxidizing the chip are not particularly limited. For example, it is preferable to oxidize the chip in an oxygen atmosphere at a temperature of 650 to 800 ° C for 3 to 24 hours, more preferably at a temperature of 650 to 750 ° C, For 9 hours. Here, the oxygen partial pressure may be 4 to 10 kgf / cm ² , but is not limited thereto.

When the chip thus formed is oxidized, the first metal oxide is formed on the chip and / or the surface of the chip by oxidation of the first metal. When the second billet is cast using a chip including the first metal oxide, the first metal oxide is uniformly distributed in the second billet to be cast. According to the present invention, since the second billet having the first metal oxide is uniformly distributed, the first metal oxide is uniformly distributed in the final electrical contact, thereby providing an electrical contact having high durability and reliability. Actually, according to the present invention, a chip having a small size is oxidized to form a first metal oxide in advance, and the electrical contact having the first metal oxide uniformly distributed can be manufactured by using the first metal oxide. In this case, the size of the chip can be appropriately adjusted within a conventional range known to those skilled in the art. For example, the chip may have a diameter of 1 to 2 mm and a length of 1 to 2 mm.

On the other hand, the method of casting the second billet in the step S4 is not particularly limited and can be produced by a conventional method known in the art. For example, the oxidized silver alloy chip and the pure silver chip may be cast into a circular mold and then subjected to a pressure of 160 to 180 kgf / cm ² , respectively.

In the present invention, annealing and cold compression or hot compression may be further performed to remove the stress of the cast billet and to control the density.

The annealing step removes the compressive stress and joins the material through the diffusion between the contact materials which have been cut and separated. The conditions of the annealing step are not particularly limited. For example, the annealing may be performed at 400 to 800 ° C for 4 to 8 hours after the second billet is introduced into the atmospheric heat treatment furnace. At this time, it may be performed once or more.

Further, the compressing step is a step of compressing the second billet to increase the density, and can be roughly divided into cold compressing at room temperature and hot compression compressing in a heated state. In order to increase the density after completion of the molding, cold compression, hot compression or both of them can be carried out in the present invention.

The conditions of the cold compression or hot compression step are also not particularly limited and can be appropriately adjusted within the ordinary range known in the art. For example, the cold compression may be performed at a pressure of 150 to 170 kgf / cm ² at room temperature, and the hot compression may be performed at a pressure of 170 to 190 kgf / cm ² at 600 to 650 ° C.

In the present invention, either the cold compression or the hot compression can be selectively performed, or both the cold compression and the hot compression can be performed. If necessary, the process of pressing the billet again after the heat treatment can be repeated until a desired compression density is obtained. At this time, the second billet is preheated to a sufficient temperature (700 to 850 ° C). At this time, the preheating is not particularly limited, and various methods such as atmosphere or high frequency preheating can be performed.

(e) Formation of a first alloy sheet (hereinafter referred to as 'S5 step')

In step S5, the casted second billet is extruded and rolled to form a first alloy plate (or strip).

The first alloy, for a preferred embodiment of the process for forming the plate, after pre-heating the second billet to 700 to 850 ℃ range, attached to the extruder loader and extruded at 150 to a pressure range of 250kgf / cm ^2, a brush or an acid The surface can be cleaned and then rolled to a desired thickness. However, it is not particularly limited.

In this step S5, the extrusion is a step of manufacturing an internal oxidized contact material in a form to press-contact. As such, when the extrusion is carried out, depending on the mold, the surface may be rough, foreign matter, and oxides may be generated, and it is necessary to finish the surface through a brush or an acid treatment process if necessary.

The conditions for the extrusion process are not particularly limited, and pressures in the range of 150 to 250 kgf / cm < ² > can be applied, for example. By this extrusion process, a contact material in the form of a strip or plate contact can be produced.

When the extrusion method is applied in this way, the distribution of the first metal oxide, which is concentrated on the crystal grains and the bonding surfaces, can be controlled. Therefore, the strip material manufactured in this manner is less likely to cause cracks and defects in the base material, so that durability and reliability of the product can be expected to be improved.

Then, the contact material is rolled to a desired thickness to match the desired thickness.

Rolling should proceed with the difference in rolling reduction depending on the workability of the material and the equipment, and generally the thickness is reduced to 0.1 to 1.0 mm per one time. At this time, if the reduction rate is more than 30%, it is easy to cause cracking of the material. Therefore, after the internal stress is removed through annealing treatment, additional rolling is performed.

(f) junction (hereinafter referred to as step S6)

In step S6, the first alloy plate formed in step S5 is bonded to the second metal plate made of a different material to produce the electrical contact of the present invention.

At this time, the method of manufacturing the multilayer electrical contact can be manufactured according to a conventional method known in the art.

The electrical contact may further include a filler material in order to allow adhesion to the mass of the conventional circuit breaker, switch, relay, switch, and the like. In order to enhance the bonding force between the filler material and the first alloy plate, the present invention is characterized in that the second metal plate of different materials is bonded to the first alloy plate, and silver (Ag) is used as the second metal plate. That is, the silver (Ag) alloy has a poor bonding property due to a large number of oxide particles through internal oxidation. Accordingly, since the bonding of the silver (Ag) alloy and the third metal plate is not smooth, a silver (Ag) layer is generally present as an intermediate layer in order to improve the bonding property. Accordingly, the second metal plate is made of silver (Ag) or a silver alloy, and more preferably silver (Ag), for enhancing the bonding force between the first alloy plate and the filler.

In the present invention, the method of joining the first alloy plate and the second metal plate is performed by a bonding method by a plasma treatment, and preferably a multilayered strip shape or a multi-layered structure is formed through bonding with a filler metal through a plasma bonding method. The plate contact shape is manufactured. However, it is not particularly limited.

In a preferable example of the plasma bonding method, the surface of the first alloy plate and the surface of the second metal plate are respectively subjected to surface activation treatment by plasma irradiation, and then the first alloy plate and the second metal plate subjected to the surface activation treatment are heated and rolled Thereby bonding them together.

Here, the plasma treatment conditions of the first alloy plate and the second metal plate are not particularly limited, and the power is 1.0 to 1.5 kw using DC plasma, and the mixed gas of argon (Ar) and hydrogen (H ₂ ) can do. The heating and rolling conditions of the first alloy plate and the second metal plate are also not particularly limited. For example, the rolling conditions are 1.0 to 3.0 Ton at a rolling roll speed of 100 to 200 m / min after heating to 100 to 500 캜 .

When the first alloy plate and the second metal plate are bonded together by the plasma treatment as described above, the bonding strength between the first alloy plate and the second metal plate can be increased.

On the other hand, the electrical contact of the present invention can be further bonded to the second metal plate (A) and the third metal plate (B) serving as a filler.

Here, the third metal plate serving as a filler material may be any of conventional filler metal materials known in the art. For example, the third metal plate may be made of copper (Cu), silver (Ag), and phosphorus Or a combination thereof.

According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the third metal plate is an alloy of copper (Cu), silver (Ag) and phosphorus (P), and silver (Ag) P) = 14.5 to 15.5: 4.8 to 5.3. The billet may be a plate-shaped strip material manufactured by hot extrusion. In this case, the remaining amount excluding silver (Ag) and phosphorus (P) based on 100 parts by weight of the total amount may be 79.2 to 80.7 parts by weight in terms of copper content.

Through the above steps, a multilayered electrical contact having a high bonding strength of 0.1 to 3.0 mm in thickness can be obtained through heating and low-pressure rolling of the first alloy plate and the second metal plate after the plasma surface activation treatment under vacuum conditions. It is also within the scope of the present invention to manufacture a multi-layered electrical contact material by further joining another metal plate made of the same material or different materials, if necessary.

(g) Brushing and slitting (hereinafter referred to as 'S7 step')

Thereafter, the burr and the foreign substance on the surface of the electrical contact material to be bonded are removed and a brushing process and a leveling process are performed according to a conventional method known in the art to obtain a good surface roughness, and then a slitting process is performed.

At this time, depending on the surface condition required by the user, it is possible to adjust the degree of processing of the surface.

On the other hand, the present invention provides an electrical contact manufactured by the above-described method.

Such an electrical contact of the present invention is a form in which two or more multi-layer heterogeneous materials including a contact material layer and a welding material are bonded to each other. Since the first metal oxide is uniformly distributed within the electrical contact, it is excellent in durability and reliability when applied to a conductive material.

More specifically, the electrical contact of the present invention comprises an alloy layer of silver (Ag) and a first metal, a first layer (intermediate layer) of silver (Ag), silver (Ag), copper (Cu) (Welding layer), and the first metal oxide is uniformly distributed in the dual alloy layer, so that durability and reliability are excellent. The material of the electrical contact may have a structure of 2 to 4 layers, and may be formed by inserting other different materials as necessary.

The electrical contact of the present invention can be used as a contact material for circuit breakers, switches, relays, switches, and the like, and can be usefully used for switches. And other technical fields in which other electrical contact materials can be usefully applied.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to Examples. However, the following Examples are intended to illustrate one embodiment of the present invention, but the scope of the present invention is not limited by the following Examples.

[Example 1]

, Silver (Ag) of 80.0 wt%, cadmium (Cd) of 18.8 wt%, tin (Sn) of 1.0 wt% and nickel (Ni) of 0.2 wt% into a melting furnace and melted at 1200 캜, 1 billet was cast. The casted first billet was subjected to a surface treatment to clean the surface, followed by pressing at a pressure of 160 kgf / mm ² . Pure Ag was also drawn in the same manner and formed into 2Φ wire.

Each formed wire was cut into a length of 2 mm to produce a chip, and the silver alloy chip was oxidized at 750 ° C. for 3.5 to 7.5 hours in an oxygen atmosphere to form a first metal oxide in a silver alloy chip . Thereafter, the oxidized chip and the pure Ag Chip were put into a circular mold, and then pressed at a pressure of 170 kgf / cm ² to cast a circular second billet. The second billet thus cast was placed in an atmospheric heat treatment furnace and annealed at 600 DEG C for 8 hours. After the annealing treatment, the resultant was cold-pressed at 170 kgf / cm ² , annealed again, and then hot-pressed at 600 ° C at 170 kgf / cm ² to adjust the density of the second billet to 99% or more.

The second billet whose density was adjusted was heated at 800 DEG C and extruded at 190 kgf / cm < ² > and rolled to a thickness of 1.2 mm to form an alloy plate. Thereafter, the silver / silver plate was bonded to a silver-plated plate made of silver (Ag), copper (Cu), and phosphorus (P) to manufacture an electrical contact.

[Example 2]

An electrical contact was manufactured in the same manner as in Example 1, except that the chip was oxidized at 750 ° C for 24 hours in an oxygen atmosphere.

[Experimental Example 1: Evaluation of cross section of electrical contact]

Sections of the electrical contacts manufactured in Examples 1 and 2 were confirmed by FE-SEM, and the results are shown in Figs. 1 and 2, respectively.

In fact, it was confirmed that oxides were uniformly formed inside the electrical contacts manufactured in Examples 1 and 2. In particular, the inside of the electrical contacts manufactured by Example 1 had an oxide Mu] m (see Figs. 1 and 2).

Claims (10)

(a) melting a contact material comprising silver (Ag) and a first metal to cast a first billet;
(b) extruding the first billet to form a wire;
(c) cutting the wire to form a chip;
(d) oxidizing the chip in an oxygen atmosphere at a temperature of 650 to 800 ° C for 3 to 9 hours to form a silver alloy chip containing a first metal oxide, Casting a second billet by applying a pressure of 160 to 180 kgf / cm ² after putting an Ag alloy chip and a silver (Ag) chip into a mold, respectively;
(d-1) introducing the second billet into an atmospheric heat treatment furnace, and then annealing at 400 to 800 ° C for 4 to 8 hours;
(d-2) adjusting the density of the second billet to be 99% or more by performing the cold compression, the hot compression, or both of the annealed second billets;
(e) extruding and rolling the second billet to form a first alloy sheet; And
(f) joining the first alloy plate and the second metal plate (A)
Wherein the step of forming the electrical contact comprises the steps of: The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the first metal in step (a) is at least one selected from the group consisting of cadmium (Cd), tin (Sn), indium (In), and nickel (Ni) The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the content of the first metal in step (a) is 20 wt% or more based on 100 wt% of the first billet. delete delete delete The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the second metal plate in step (f) is silver (Ag) or a silver alloy. The method according to claim 1,
Wherein the step (f) is bonded by a plasma treatment. The method according to claim 1,
Further comprising a step of joining the first alloy plate and the second metal plate using the third metal plate (B) made of different materials in the step (f). 10. The method of claim 9,
Wherein the third metal plate has a composition of silver (Ag): phosphorus (P): copper (Cu) in a weight ratio of 14.5 to 15.5: 4.8 to 5.3: 79.2 to 80.7.

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