LAUSR

Stress is always an important factor in designing next generations of electronics devices and systems. It certainly has been paramount for the success of the microelectronics industry and the next generations of 3D Integrated Circuits (IC) design and packaging technologies. Stress and, in general, mechanics of materials, enables robust and reliable electronics devices, but often also crucially influences the next revolutions of the technology, in terms of performance and extreme functionality. Today’s microelectronics are the testament of how design and materials against electromigration and low-k dielectric breakdown, for instance, are crucial factors for their reliability, while some of the performances (for instance, in terms of computing speed) were due to strain engineering of silicon, and extreme functionality (in memory technology, for example, that has been enabled by 3D integration) has been increasingly adopted only by full control of the 3D state of the stresses in the devices/systems. Stress continues to play ever-increasingly critical roles in next-generation electronics devices and systems, as novel materials and multi-length scales and dimensions of technology are the only constant in the industry (nanophotonics, nanoplasmonics, and many others).