Constant-Current Stressing of SiCr-Based Thin-Film Resistors: Initial “Wearout” Investigation

Brynsvold, R.; Manning, Kevin

doi:10.1109/tdmr.2007.901178

Cited by 13 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…An explanation for this trend may lie with morphological changes in the wire prior to the EM that are induced by the high current densities needed to drive self-heating at lower T env . Microstructural annealing of metal nanowires under high current is a well known process that can ultimately decrease electron scattering rates (and thus the electron wind force) by healing defects and merging grains [31][32][33][34][35]. It is possible that as T env drops and the critical currents necessary to sustain elevated temperatures increase, the wire become increasingly hardened against EM by current annealing on the ramp prior to EM onset.…”

Section: Critical Junction Temperature In Nanowiresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical temperature in feedback-controlled electromigration of gold nanostructures

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents several experiments demonstrating the need for a more nuanced picture of electromigration (EM) than that of a fixed critical junction temperature at which EM onset occurs. Our data suggests that even for a fixed cross-sectional geometry the critical junction temperature for EM, T c , varies with environmental temperature, thermal resistance of adjacent regions, and even the direction of the current flow in asymmetric structures. We have performed feedback-controlled EM on nanowires at environmental temperatures between 75 and 260 K and fit the EM onset points with a constant junction power model. We find that average fit critical power is monotonically increasing with decreasing temperature, but is decidedly nonlinear at lower temperatures. We extract and compare the corresponding T c values using several different thermal models which utilize measured values of nanowire thermal conductivity for our devices: these models all agree on a moderately increasing T c with decreasing environmental temperature. This is tentatively explained by enhanced current-driven annealing on the voltage ramp prior to EM onset which decreases structural scattering, thereby increasing the critical temperature at which wind-force-driven hopping events will achieve a critical atomic flux. We also obtain fit critical power for a series of bowtie structures of identical constriction but varying adjacent thermal resistance (R th), and estimate that T c in the constriction varies with R th for higher resistance structures. Critical power measurements on a second series of asymmetric bowties further suggests that T c also depends on the alignment of the electron flow with the temperature gradient at the constriction.

show abstract