Measurement of stress gradients generated by electromigration

Abstract

Stress gradients generated by electromigration in aluminum films were measured at 340 °C. The stresses were measured by combining x-ray topography to record the effects of the film stress and scanning electron microscopy to measure the information on the topographs. At the electromigration threshold the stress gradients of 200-μm-long stripes are 6×1010 dyn/cm3, corresponding to an effective charge of z*=−1.2.