AMC-ETEC (St. Cézaire, France) has created a new line of foam coatings for metallic contacts. This revolutionary, internationally patented material for electrical applications, produced by evaporating pure silver in a vacuum, is known as ECOCONTACT. The manufacturing process has received awards from EDF (France's national electric utility). Particularly effective in hostile environments where maintenance is both costly and dangerous, the process provides major energy savings by reducing losses in electrical power circuit contacts. In addition, maintenance costs are significantly lowered.

The ECOCONTACT silver foams allow companies to increase the service life of high-amperage connections by slowing down contact surface degradation and to restore good conductivity to worn connections. The reduction in connection maintenance costs comes from eliminating resurfacing operations.

The contact foams are produced by the evaporation of pure silver in a vacuum. These foams, with their honeycomb structure, offer good porosity and malleability characteristics. The honeycomb structure enables a surface comprising thousands of micron-sized contact points (up to 130,000 points per square inch for a foam thickness of 0.08 inches [20 cm]) to be produced. These micro-points perforate the oxide layers, thus creating micro-welds. This feature enables any current concentration zones to be eliminated.

No special procedures are needed to install the ECOCONTACT foam. Users simply open the connection a tiny bit, slide in the interface foam and retighten the connection. ECOCONTACT foam is supplied ready to install in the form of flat plates or sheets cut to the size of the contact surface. These plates are designed for electrical connections from 100 to 100,000 A.
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