Battery contact material and plating specs

[TheTick]

I have a design for a product with a CR2032 battery. Due to space constraints, we needed to design a custom metal piece that works as battery contact and button contact.

We know that the clip will be phosphor bronze with tin-nickel plating (similar to Keystone brand products). However, we do not know what specific grade of phosphor bronze to use, or which plating specs (composition, thickness) would be best.

I want to spec material and plating that are readily available and widely accepted and used in the PCB component industry.

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[ne1r]

I see you are looking for tin-nickel plating, so this may not be very helpful, but in any case it should at least add some activity to the thread and possibly attract someone who has more relevant input.

There is a battery contact design guide at:

http://www.duracell.com/procell/design/batterycontact.asp#1H

It is fairly vague on some of the finer details.

In the past, we have used 50 microinches Au over 30 microinches Ni on phosphor bronze contacts. These contacts were used to carry low-level signals so it was important that contact resistance was low. For battery contacts, we have used 20 microinches Ni on steel (not on phosphor bronze.)

If anyone does know what is widely accepted and used, I would be curious too.