Electrical instability of thin films driven by Joule heating

We study the electrical instability of a thin film associated with the generation of defects driven by local Joule heating. For this purpose we have recently developed a biased percolation model (BPM) based on the random resistor network scheme. Here we present an extension of this model by allowing for thermal interactions among first neighbour resistors and by taking into account the dependence of each elemental resistance on the local temperature. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to investigate the role of both these features on the film degradation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.