The Dynamics of Voids in Metals

Jon Wilkening, University of California, Berkeley

Void growth is one of the primary causes of failure in small circuit elements sustaining high current densities, and is driven by vacancy diffusion, electromigration, surface tension, stress, and grain geometry. I will present a 2-D model (appropriate for thin metallic conducting lines) which neglects stress and grain geometry; in particular, I will demonstrate the use of level set methods to track interfaces, and will describe our method of solving elliptic PDE on an irregular domain using a uniform grid which does not line up with the domain boundary.

Abstract Author(s): Jon Wilkening