Abstract
Whisker formation in tin (Sn) plating in small electronic devices, which can cause a short circuit resulting in fatal functional damage, has been an important issue in the engineering field. With the recent requirement of lead-free materials, doping of Pb as a measure to reduce the whisker growth is not a practical solution any longer. Although the mechanism of the whisker formation and growth is quite complicated, stress migration is suspected to play an important role. Thus, it is impending to reveal the mechanism of diffusion of atoms in Sn under stress and to find a way to suppress it. In this study, we examine the effect of impurity atoms on the vacancy migration by ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculation.
