Growth of Electromigration-Induced Damages in Graphene Material: A Simulation and Theoretical Study

We addressed the growth of electromigration-induced damages and failure mechanisms of graphene material. The damages, including voids and hillocks, were empirically approximated as the defects mainly formed in stretching, shearing and nano-indentation and possibly originated from stress migration and thermal migration, as we reported previously. The evolution of the damages was mathematically modeled with Tersoff potential and in Verlet algorithm, theoretically analyzed in molecular dynamics, numerically simulated with software LAMMPS and experimentally evaluated with results reported in literature. The evolution of the damages and possible failure mechanisms of both mono-layered and multi-layered graphene were simulated. The physics for electromigration, involving the temperature, atomic defects, layer number of graphene, impurity and size effect, remains to be investigated. We suggest that the simulated results be of some basic and technological interest in fabrication of micro-electronics and nano-electronics devices.