Electromigration is a main challenge in the pursuit of power electronics, because physical limit to increase current density in power electronics is electromigration (EM), whereas much higher electrical current and voltage are required for power electronics packaging. So the effect of EM is an important issue in applications where high current densities are used, such as in microelectronics and related structures (e.g., Power ICs). Since the structure size of integrated circuits (ICs) decreases and the practical significance of this effect increases, the result is EM failure. On the other hand, in the next generation power electronics technology electrical current density is expected to exceed 10 7 A/cm 2 which is another challenge. This review work has been carried out to identify the mechanism of EM damage in power electronics (e.g., pure metallization and solder joints) and also how to control this kind of damage.

No abstract

Copper oxide (CuO) thin films have been deposited on glass substrates by a facile sol-gel dipcoating technique with varying withdrawal speeds from 0.73 to 4.17 mm/s. The variation of film thickness manifested by dip-coating withdrawal speeds was investigated in detail to investigate its effect on the structural, morphological, opto-electrical, and wettability properties of CuO thin films for CO2 gas-sensing applications. The crystallinity, as well as phase purity of dip-coated CuO, were confirmed by both X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectral analyses. The surface morphology of the films characterized by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed that pore density decreases with the increase of withdrawal speeds and grain size is found to increase with the increase of film thickness corroborating the XRD results. The optical bandgap of dipcoated CuO films was estimated in the range of 1.47 -1.52 eV from the UV-VIS-NIR transmission data and it is found to decrease with the increment of Urbach tail states accompanied by the increase of film thickness. The ratio of the electrical and optical conductivity of CuO films is found to decrease with increasing withdrawal speeds due to the variation of carrier concentration. Among all the studied films, the sample deposited to a 0.73 mm/s withdrawal speed exhibited the highest crystallinity, porous morphology, highest pore density, opto-electrical conductivity as well as water contact angle, and therefore maximum gas sensing response of carbon dioxide (CO2) vapor in the air recorded at room temperature.