Thermal effects on the electrical degradation of thin film resistors

Recently we introduced a biased percolation model to study the electrical failure of thin-film resistors. Here we extend this model by allowing thermal interactions among first neighbour elemental resistances and accounting for the dependence of each elemental resistance on the local temperature. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to investigate the main properties of the film degradation such as: damage pattern, film lifetime, evolution of the resistance and of the 1/f resistance–noise spectrum.