The phenomenon of arcing is the major cause of
electrical contact degradation in electrical switches. Degradation involves
contact erosion and/or welding. The use of special contact material and that
of specific material processing may permit contact erosion to be reduced, in
particular by shortening the arc duration. A short review of these
approaches is presented in the first part of this paper. In the second part,
the development of a new self-blowing contact material is described. This
material has been tested under dc voltages from 14 V to 42 V. A reduction of
the arc duration by a factor of 4 approximately was obtained as was a
concomitant reduction of the extinction gap to less than 2 mm. This material
will contribute to achieving better reliability in high current-high
voltages breaking devices, and will aid in their miniaturization, e.g. in
relays.