Abstract
The mechanism of electromigration is discussed from the perspective of electromagnetism, rather than from the traditional view of momentum exchange owing to collisions between electrons and diffusing ions. It is suggested that, from the perspective of conservation of momentum, the momentum transferred to the diffusing ions is related to the Maxwell stress, and the effective charge is proportional to the density of the net charge within the volume element. It is also suggested that, from Poynting’s theorem, the energy associated with electromigration is related to the work done by the electric field, and the conversion of the nonelectrostatic energy from the electric power source into the chemical energy of the diffusion system. From both perspectives, the effective driving force can be shown to have a square dependence on the current density. Therefore, it is suggested that the effective charge number is linearly related to the current density.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Division of Materials Science at the Department of Energy through Grants DE-FG02-99ER45771 (WCJ). The first author would like to thank the organizers of the symposium of Pb-free solders at TMS 2010. The first author is grateful to Dr. F.Q. Yang from CME, University of Kentucky for interesting discussions. The first author, especially, would like to acknowledge the financial support, kindness, and generosity from his PhD advisor W.C. Johnson at UVA.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Zhou, P., Johnson, W.C. Discussion on the Mechanism of Electromigration from the Perspective of Electromagnetism. J. Electron. Mater. 39, 2583–2587 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-010-1350-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-010-1350-x