Role of Stress-Driven Interfacial Instability in the Failure of Confined Electric Interconnects

Abstract

No matter how small, fast, or efficient electronics become, they are useless when they fail. The authors show that thermally induced stress in a metallic interconnect can produce a surface instability along its interface with a dielectric, leading to breakage. In certain ranges of thermal stress, this could be the dominant failure mechanism, with the critical instability length becoming shorter than the Blech length for electromigration effects. For soft, low-$\ensuremath{\kappa}$ dielectrics, this phenomenon may be an additional consideration in designing and manufacturing reliable devices.