High Performance Wire: Strength and Conductivity for Demanding Designs

1. What Is High Performance Wire?
2. Why use High Performance Wire?
3. How does the increased strength of High Performance Wire stack up with conductivity?
4. What kind of High Performance Wire does MWS Wire provide?
5. What are the core differences between XHTW and EHTW wire?
6. What are the applications for High Performance Wire?
7. High Performance Wire by the numbers.

What Is High Performance Wire?

High performance wire is a copper-alloy conductor designed to deliver a practical balance: strong mechanical performance without giving up the electrical conductivity needed for various applications usually reserved for standard copper wire. Compared with standard ETP copper, High Performance Wire from MWS Wire Industries is built for environments in which wire must remain dependable under high mechanical stress.

Why use High Performance Wire?

MWS High Performance Wire (HPW) combines copper-alloy conductivity with higher tensile and fatigue strength, helping designers improve reliability in products exposed to repeated motion, bending, winding, or other dynamic loads.

That distinction matters because a conductor can be electrically capable yet still become the weak point in a design if it breaks after repeated bending or tension. By improving the wire’s mechanical characteristics, high performance wire can increase service life and reliability under dynamic loading.

How does the increased strength of High Performance Wire stack up with conductivity?

The central advantage of high performance wire is its increased tensile strength. Our HPW products provide tensile strength of  50% to 100% greater than ETP copper, while maintaining conductivity of up to 89% of ETP copper.

What kind of High Performance Wire does MWS Wire provide?

MWS provides two varieties of high performance wire options:

• XHTW (Extra High Tension Wire): A high-tensile, high-fatigue-strength option that retains 89% of ETP copper’s conductivity. XHTW is available in soft or hard tempers.
• EHTW (Extreme High Tension Wire): MWS’s highest fatigue and strength option, designed to produce fewer wire breaks in cable constructions while retaining 80% of ETP copper’s conductivity. EHTW is also available in soft or hard tempers.
• MWS supplies these products as bare wire or with insulation. Most alloys can be plated with nickel, silver, or gold. Wire can also be laser ablated or cut and straightened to discrete lengths.

What are the core differences between XHTW and EHTW wire?

Relative to ETP copper, XHTW offers a particularly strong conductivity/durability balance. EHTW trades some additional conductivity for the highest bending and fatigue performance of the two products. Compared to ETP copper, XHTW performs up to 6 times better in repeated bending tests to fatigue and more than 10 times for EHTW.

What are the applications for High Performance Wire?

High performance wire is especially useful wherever space is limited, movement is repeated, or failure is costly. Typical applications include severe coil winding, voice coils, miniature cables, aerospace wire, catheter electrode wires, and other medical applications.

For example, miniature cables may undergo frequent flexing in a compact assembly. A wire with stronger fatigue performance can help preserve conductor integrity over time. In coil-winding applications, greater tensile strength can also support demanding manufacturing and operating conditions.

High Performance Wire by the numbers.

By comparing High Performance Wire to other copper alloy conductors, (especially alloys known for high strength, fatigue resistance, or corrosion resistance like Beryllium Copper and Phosphor Bronze), one can see that MWS High Performance Wire retains much more conductivity than either of those options when compared to ETP copper.

Metal	Unit	Copper	Beryllium Copper	Phosphor Bronze	XHTW	EHTW
Description		ETP C11000	C17200	C51000	Extra High Tensile Wire	Extreme High Tensile Wire
Density	lb/cu in	0.323	0.298	0.32	0.325	0.325
Conductivity	% IACS-Soft	100	22	15	89	80
Electrical Resistance	ohms/cir mil ft	10.3	46.2	69.1	11.8	12.9
Tensile (Soft)*	ksi	34	68	51	50	56
Tensile (Hard)*	ksi	55	152	110	62	68
Elongation*	%	6 to 36	1 to 42	5 to 49	10 to 25	10 to 30
Solderability		Excellent	Good	Excellent	Good	Good
Weldability		Excellent	Good	Excellent	Good	Good
Bend Test**		100	—	—	600	1,050

*Values for tensile strength and elongation are nominal and generally size dependent.
**Bend-test values represent repeated bend fatigue strength compared with annealed copper.

High performance Wire represents the best of both performance and conductivity. For more information about High Performance Wire, visit our product page.