A simulation of electromigration-induced transgranular slits

An on-chip aluminum interconnect carries an intense electric current at an elevated temperature, motivating atoms to diffuse in the solid state, and inducing voids that may cause an open failure. Recent observations have shown that a void sometimes collapses to a slit running nearly perpendicular to the electric current direction. Such a slit often lies inside a grain rather than along a grain boundary. An earlier calculation showed that diffusion on the void surface, driven by the electric current, can cause a circular void to translate in an infinite, isotropic interconnect. It was suggested recently that this solution may be unstable, and that two forces compete in determining the void stability: surface tension favors a rounded void, and the electric current favors a slit. A linear perturbation analysis, surprisingly, revealed that the translating circular void is stable against infinitesimal shape perturbation. Consequently, the slit instability must have resulted from finite imperfections. This article reviews the experimental and theoretical findings and describes a numerical simulation of finite void shape change. We determine the electric field by a conformal mapping of complex variables, and update the void shape for a time step by a variational method. The simulation shows that a finite void shape imperfection or surface tension anisotropy can cause a void to collapse to a slit.