Electrical Failure Analysis of Au Nanowires

Abstract

Au nanowires were patterned with electron beam (e-beam) lithography and fabricated with an Au film deposited by e-beam evaporation. Two failure analyses were performed: failure current density and electromigration. It was experimentally found that the failure current density increases for the smaller width wire. Size and surface effects on the failure current density were explored. Also, in situ electromigration studies on Au nanowires were performed to characterize the activation energy of Au nanowires with a SEM.

Electron-induced limitation of surface plasmon propagation in silver nanowires

“…After 0.3 V, the trend becomes nonlinear with an increasing resistance of the nanowire with voltage. This variation of resistance is due to the temperature rise caused by the current flow [34] and the onset of morphological changes induced by an electromigration process [35][36][37]. The effect of surfactant on the electron flow and the subsequent monotonous current/voltage characteristics shown in figures 1(a) and (b) were systematically measured for all contacted Ag nanowires.…”

“…Figure 6 shows the maximum current densities before electrical failure (red squares) as a function of nanowire section. Like Cu and Au nanowires, the failure current density in crystalline Ag structures depends on the section as a result of a better heat dissipation in the glass substrate [34,35,50]. The data points represented with black circles are the measured current densities after which the corresponding Re{N eff } of the surface plasmon mode drops below the average value measured at low voltage bias (see figure 3(a)).…”