Abstract

This paper will demonstrate how ANSYS/Mechanical can be used in modeling a complex phenomenon like electromigration taking into account electrical field forces, thermal gradients, stress gradients, and atomic concentration gradient. Electromigration is a physical phenomenon of mass transport caused by the gradual movement of the ions in a conductor due to momentum transfer between conducting electrons and diffusing metal atoms.
Electromigration is most significant in applications where current densities are high, for example microelectronics, semiconductors, etc. As the size of integrated circuits (ICs) decreases, while required currents remain roughly the same, current densities necessarily increase and the effect of electromigration becomes more significant. "Electromigration has been the most menacing and persistent threat to interconnect reliability." ANSYS can be used to predict electromigration threat to interconnect reliability.