Electrical contacts are the core components of electrical switches, which play the roles of switching on, carrying and sectional current. Their performance largely determines the performance and reliability of electrical switches. Because of the high melting point of tungsten carbide and its strong resistance to electric corrosion, silver carbide has excellent conductivity and thermal conductivity, silver tungsten carbide materials also have good performance.

For the separation and extraction of tungsten, the common methods include solvent extraction, precipitation, ion exchange, activated carbon adsorption and so on. Overall evaluation shows that in the existing technology of separation of tungsten, there are many shortcomings, such as low separation efficiency, complex process, environmental pollution and so on. How to break through the existing technology and improve separation efficiency is the problem that scientific and technological personnel need to solve.

Silver tungsten carbide contact material has the advantages of high hardness, oxidation resistance and relatively stable contact resistance compared with silver-tungsten contact material under the same manufacturing process, especially high breaking ability, low corrosion and low welding tendency. Silver tungsten carbide 40 contact material is usually used as contact material in modern circuit breakers abroad. Because of its superior performance, there has been a trend to replace silver tungsten 50.

As an indispensable functional material in machinery, shipbuilding, aerospace, construction, nuclear power, metallurgy and other industries, tungsten electrode materials are mainly used in inert gas shielded welding, plasma cutting, spraying and smelting technology. At the same time, another important application of tungsten electrode material is to act as a hot cathode electron emission source in welding process.