A selection catalogue for connector copper: why it is needed and how to build it

Contacts are the current-carrying core of a connector, so copper quality directly shapes contact resistance and service life. Contact resistance combines constriction, film and conductor resistance, and contact force, surface morphology, corrosion resistance and plating all trace back to the copper material.

Selection has to weigh mechanical, physical and process properties alongside microstructure, surface condition and batch consistency. Stress relaxation, for instance, requires residual stress ratios after long high-temperature exposure, while bending and wrapping often reveal formability better than elongation alone.

Existing standards sit either at product level or at base-material level, with no selection layer between them; identical alloys carry different designations across mills, and thin strip and fine wire remain under-specified. The paper argues the catalogue is feasible technically, economically and organisationally, proposing a '1+N' framework and four stages from groundwork to optimisation.