Numerical simulation of stress evolution during electromigration in IC interconnect lines

A finite element simulation of stress evolution in thin metal film during electromigration is reported in this paper. The electromigration process is modeled by a coupled diffusion- mechanical partial differential equations (PDEs). The PDEs are implemented with a plane strain formulation and numerically solved with the finite element (FE) method. The evolutions of hydrostatic stress, each component of the deviatoric stress tensor, and Von Mises' stress were simulated for several cases with different line lengths and current densities. Two types of displacement boundary conditions are considered. The simulation results are compared with Korhonen's analytical model and Black and Blech's experimentalesults.