A new model was presented which was formally similar to a thermal stress model and which provided a method for calculating all of the components of the stress tensor during electromigration. It clearly coupled vacancy transport and stress evolution to the boundary conditions which applied to the metal. Analytical solutions were considered for electromigration normal to, or parallel to, a plate. It was found that the effective charge for vacancies in pure polycrystalline Al, at 533K, was equal to about 1.3. Upon using parameters that were either measured, or were calculated by using the embedded-atom method, the model exhibited good agreement with both transient electromigration data and drift data.

A New General Model for Mechanical Stress Evolution during Electromigration. M.E.Sarychev, Y.V.Zhitnikov, L.Borucki, C.L.Liu, T.M.Makhviladze: Thin Solid Films, 2000, 365[2], 211-8