During its servicelife some electrically overstressed copper conductors might exhibit voids and cracks within the material. The hypothesis is pursued, that the material is heated up locally until it melts. This process of melting and setting leads to those voids and cracks. Using a specific electric stress cycle allows analysing the degration process.

A conduction path made out of electro deposited copper is used as a simple model. It is investigated, whether the chosen stress cycle is sufficient to partially melt the conduction path. The influence of the skin effect is observed by calculation and simulation. Image processing is used to calculate the surface change ratio and to detect the position of destruction.

Keywords: conduction path, image processing, image registration, image subtraction, optical flow, skin effect

August 28, 2014