An activation-energy study of the microstructural changes in al-1-percent-si interconnects

Abstract

There are several reasons to believe that the microstructural changes in Al-Si interconnects has to be described in terms of a spectrum of activation energies rather than in terms of a single activation energy. In this article, a method is presented to extract a spectrum of activation energies from an isothermal and a constant heating rate experiment. The formalism was applied to the relaxation behavior of passivated Al-1%Si interconnects. The method of analysis shows that the microstructural relaxation mechanisms in these interconnects are characterized by a narrow spectrum, centered at an energy of about 1.2 eV.