Electromigration-driven Evolution of the Surface Morphology and Composition for a Bi-Component Solid Film

¹ Department of Mathematics, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101
² Applied Physics Institute, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101

^⋆ Corresponding author. E-mail: mikhail.khenner@wku.edu
^⋆⋆ Current affiliation: Ph.D. program, Department of Mathematical Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102.

Abstract

A two PDEs-based model is developed for studies of a morphological and compositional evolution of a thermodynamically stable alloy surface in a strong electric field, assuming different and anisotropic diffusional mobilities of the two atomic components. The linear stability analysis of a planar surface and the computations of morphology coarsening are performed. It is shown that the conditions for instability and the characteristic wavelength and growth rate differ from their counterparts in a single-component film. Computational parametric analyses reveal the sensitivity of the scaling exponents to the electric field strength and to the magnitude of the anisotropies difference.