Power regulation and electromigration in platinum microwires

We introduce a new experimental setup with a biasing circuit and computer control for electrical power regulation under reversing polarity in Pt microwires with dimensions of 1×10 μm(2). The circuit is computer controlled via a data acquisition board. It amplifies a control signal from the computer and drives current of alternating polarity through the sample in question. Time-to-failure investigations under DC and AC current stress are performed. We confirm that AC current stress can improve the life time of microwires at least by a factor of 10(3) compared to the corresponding time-to-failure under DC current stress.