Phase-field modeling of grain-boundary grooving and migration under electric current and thermal gradient

Grain-boundary migration, void formation as well as associated hillock formation are important mechanisms which lead to the failure of interconnects in the microelectronic packages. An understanding of the underlying physics of each of the phenomena can allow better design of interconnects. In this paper, we formulate a new phase-field model based on a grand-potential formalism for studying the phenomena of grain-boundary grooving under the combined influence of pure diffusion controlled transport, electric current and thermal gradient. We separately investigate the contributions of each of the stimuli towards the process of grain-boundary migration and hillock formation, by performing phase-field simulations as well as comparing with analytical theories. Additionally, we qualitatively reproduce the phenomena observed in experiments on polycrystalline metals, wherein electromigration and thermomigration may act in unison or against each other towards their contributions in grooving, hillocking and void growth. (C) 2018 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved