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Black's law revisited - Nucleation and growth in electromigration failure

Article in Microelectronics Reliability · September 2007

DOI: 10.1016/j.microrel.2007.07.094 · Source: DBLP

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 Black’s Law Revisited…Nucleation and Growth in
Electromigration Failure

J.R. Lloyd
IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights NY
jrlloyd@us.ibm.com
914-945-2979

Suggestion: Quality and Reliability for Devices and Systems

Abstract

Black’s Law as commonly used is critically analyzed with respect to present understanding of the nature of
electromigration failure. The concept of nucleation and growth as well as the effect of thermal effects other
than thermally activated diffusion are considered and compared to empirical results. It is seen that
significant errors can occur if traditional methods are used. A scheme is proposed to extrapolate test results
to field applications that will reduce exposure to unanticipated failure.
 Black’s Law Revisited…Nucleation and Growth in
Electromigration Failure

J.R. Lloyd
IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights NY
jrlloyd@us.ibm.com
914-945-2979

Introduction
In the earliest papers describing the pervasive failure mechanism of electromigration, Jim Black of
Motorola found that the failure due to electromigration approximately followed the following relationship
now known as Black’s Law.

 ∆H 
t 50 = Aj − 2 exp  (1)
 kT 

Where j is the current density, ∆H is the activation energy of failure, A is a constant and kT, as usual, is the
average atomic thermal energy.

The current exponent, n, was found to vary from experiment to experiment. This led to an adoption of
Black’s Law that allowed the current exponent to vary and thus accommodate some of these disparate
experimental results.

 ∆H 
t 50 = Aj − n exp  (2)
 kT 

Aside from high values (n >2) that could be attributed to Joule heating, no credible explanation was
initially brought forth to explain the fractional values of n that were needed to fit the data. Here we
reconcile fractional values for n by invoking a nucleation and growth process for electromigration failure.
Here it is realized that electromigration induced void nucleation would be characterized by n = 2, whereas
void growth would depend on the drift velocity, which results in n = 1. The total failure time would be the
sum of the two terms. If failure were nucleation dominated, n would be closer to 2, but if void growth
consumed most of the time to failure n would be closer to 1

Nucleation and Growth

If each process is driven by the same driving force, in this case electromigration, but exhibit different
kinetics, the partition of the failure time would not be a single function of the driving force, Therefore, the
failure time would follow
 AkT B(T )   ∆H 
t 50 = t nuc + t g =  + 2  exp  (3)
 j j   kT 
where A and B are constants that contain geometric information, such as the size of the void required for
failure. Given any values for A and B, it follows that the relative contributions of nucleation and growth
will vary as a function of the current density. At higher current densities the time to failure will
proportionately be more growth than at lower current densities.
Agreement with Experiment

The tests were performed at a constant temperature of 300C and at stress currents ranging more than an
order of magnitude. From the failure times, two distinct populations were identified. The weak mode fit the
power law with an exponent of n = 1.4 ± 0.1 and the strong mode with an exponent of n = 1.1 ± 0.1. The
results are shown below.

1000

Strong Mode
Median Time to Failure

n = 1.1

100

Weak Mode
n = 1.4

10

1 10
Current (mA)

Figure 1 Results from Ref 20 plotted according to Black’s Equation for the two observed failure modes.

At a current of .05 mA, the lines drawn in Fig. 1 cross, the weak mode becoming a strong mode and vice
versa. This is highly unlikely to be a realistic picture of the failure behavior. The paradox is resolved if we
invoke nucleation and growth. Since we are at constant temperature we can simplify Eqn.(3) to

A′ B ′
t 50 = + 2 (3a)
j j

Fitting the data to Eqn. (3a) (See Figure 2) we first find that the correlation coefficients are even better than
the power law fit (0.9891 and .9949 for the strong and weak modes respectively) with the same number, 2,
of adjustable parameters.

Here we come to the interesting conclusion that in both the weak and the strong modes, the nucleation time
is essentially the same, certainly within experimental error, but that the growth times differ by a factor of
about 3. In addition, there is no crossover in the failure modes at lower currents.

We also need to consider the effect of temperature history on the mechanical stress in the conductor
induced by the differences of the thermal coefficient of expansion in the structure. Because the structure
sees processing steps at elevated temperatures, the Cu conductor will experience a tensile stress at lower
temperatures that will reduce the amount of electromigration induced stress necessary for void nucleation

Therefore, the growth portion of the accelerated tests should be extracted and only this should be
extrapolated to use conditions, using 1/j kinetics and subtracting the nucleation time from the data. For the
weak mode studied above, this procedure would reduce the time to failure at use conditions by about 30%
from what would be calculated from the power law from a typical stress current of 2 x 106 A/cm2 , which
may be important. For the strong mode, with a larger value for n, the lifetime must be reduced to about a
third of its extrapolated value.
 1000

900
A (weak) 143 ±38
800 B (weak) 61 ±26
A (strong) 453 ±38

Median Time to Failure (hrs)

700 B (strong) 56 ±27

600

500

400

300

200

100

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Current (mA)

Figure 2 Plot of the data of Fig (1) according to nucleation and growth of Eqn. (3a)

Apparent Activation Energy

According to Eqn. (3) it is assumed that the activation energy for both nucleation and growth are identical.
Since it is assumed that they are both controlled by mass transport, this appears to be a reasonable
assumption. The apparent activation energy, obtained by fitting the data to an Arrhenius relation will not
produce the correct value. The apparent activation energy is obtained by taking the derivative of the natural
logarithm of the lifetime with respect to the inverse temperature. Taking into consideration all, the
temperature dependencies other than Arrhenius, the following apparent activation energy is arrived at

2γE∆αkT 2 [σ n − E∆α (T0 − T )]

∆H app
f
= ∆H − kT − (4)
γ [σ n − E∆α (T0 − T )]2 + Aj

Error in apparent activation energy

0.29
0.27
0.25
Error (eV) 0.23
0.21
0.19
0.17
0.15
400 450 500 550 600
Temperature (Kelvins)

Figure 3 Error in the activation energy for void nucleation as a function of testing temperature where the
stress free temperature is assumed to be 673K and the delamination stress is assumed to be 600 MPa

Here we see that the apparent activation energy will be a function of temperature and current, as well as
temperature history. This is difficult if not impossible to incorporate into extrapolations from test to use
conditions, but a simplified but conservative scheme has been developed that can allow reasonable
extrapolations yet maintain reliabity.

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