Resistivity of thin Cu films with surface roughness

Abstract

We present an atomistic first-principles calculation of resistivity induced by atomically rough surfaces of thin Cu films. Our calculations show that the resistivity increases significantly due to surface roughness scattering and it is quite sensitive to both the amount and the nature of roughness. We determine the degree of specular scattering at rough surfaces by a parameter $p$ which is obtained by fitting the ab initio data to the well-known Fuchs-Sondheimer model for surface scattering of thin metal films. In particular, we have obtained the $p=p\left(x\right)$ curve, where $\left(1-x\right)$ is the concentration of the rough sites on the Cu surface.