High Current Density Effect on In-situ Atomic Migration Characteristics of a BiTe Thin Film System

Understanding fundamental atomic migration characteristics of multicomponent chalcogenide materials such as GeSbTe (GST) and BiTe are important in order to investigate the failure mechanism related to the electrical reliability of thermoelectric materials under high current density. In this work, high current density effect on the in-situ atomic migration characteristics of the BiTe thermoelectric thin films was conducted by real-time observation inside an scanning electron microscope chamber. Under the high current density conditions ranging from 0.83×10 6 to 1.0×10 6 A/cm 2 at 100 °C, Te migrated toward the cathode, and Bi migrated toward the anode because the electrostatic force was dominant by very high Joule heating effect.