AME Seminar: Nan Wang

Abstract
Many nanoelectronic devices are operated with high electric current density at elevated temperature. Stability of nanostructures under those operation conditions are critical for assessing the life time of the devices. Among various mechanisms for inducing structural changes, nanoscale surface/interface effects and electric current driven atom migration (electromigration) are discussed in this talk. The surface effect is discussed in the context of wire fragmentation at elevated temperature. By combining phase field modelling and theoretical analysis, it is shown that the surface energy anisotropy in nanoscale crystalline wires plays a critical role in stabilizing the structure. The electromigration effect is discussed in the context of metal interconnects in integrated circuits. It is shown that a quantum mechanically informed phase field crystal method can be used to model the electric current driven microstructural change and quantitatively capture the electromigration induced interconnects failure.

Bio
Nan Wang is an associate professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Guangdong Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Northeastern University in 2011 and completed his postdoc research in the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Wang was a research associate in the Center for Physics of Materials at McGill University before joining the Guangdong Technion.