Electromigration and Electronic Device Degradation

Electromigration is a mass transport effect in metals under high current densities, which causes the metal atoms to migrate away from a high current density point and leads to the failure of integrated circuits. It is therefore an important reliability issue. This study reviews the topic for both the silicon and GaAs technologies. It surveys the status of electromigration physics in microelectronics, and summarizes various rate controlling details, including an investigation of temperature dependence.