Hi Tom ! I would recommend the following groups of publications: 1.) J. Schimkat, Grundlagen und Modelle zur Entwicklung und Optimierung von Silizium-Mikrorelais, Dissertation, TU Berlin, 1996 and other papers of this author with coauthor Prof. Schlaak e.g. in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Electrical Contacts, last held in Zürich in 2002 2.) the very basic publication of Paschen et al. (Sorry, I don't have more detailed information about that). He was the first to propose a model for breakdown in narrow gaps in dependence of the gas pressure between the electrodes. 3.) C.-J. Kim, J. Y. Kim, and B. Sridharan, Comparative evaluation of drying techniques for surface micromachining, Sens. Actuat. A, 64:17-26, 1998. They describe mechanisms of the stiction effect when cleaning surface micromachined cantilever beams. 4.) Prof. W.F. Rieder, TU Vienna, Austria. He is probably one of the most experienced people, dealing with contact phenomena during all his life. 5.) and, last but not least, Ragnar Holms famous textbook "Electrical Contacts". Hope that helps Stephan -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Tom Hodge [mailto:thodge@capellaphotonics.com] Gesendet: Freitag, 14. März 2003 19:50 An: 'General MEMS discussion' Betreff: [mems-talk] air gap breakdown Hi All, Does anyone have experience with electrical breakdown of narrow air gaps (several microns) between silicon electrodes ? My experience is that the breakdown voltage strongly depends on contamination of these narrow trenches and would like to find out more information. Regards, Tom H. Hodge Capella Photonics Inc. 19 Great Oaks Blvd Suite 20 San Jose, Ca. 95119 Ph 408-360-4257 Fax 408-225-6248 email thodge@capellaphotonics.com www.capellaphotonics.com _______________________________________________ MEMS-talk@memsnet.org mailing list: to unsubscribe or change your list options, visit http://mail.mems-exchange.org/mailman/listinfo/mems-talk Hosted by the MEMS Exchange, providers of MEMS processing services. Visit us at http://www.memsnet.org/