Resistivity of thin Cu films with surface roughness

Received 24 October 2008; revised manuscript received 25 January 2009; published 2 April 2009We present an atomistic first-principles calculation of resistivity induced by atomically rough surfaces ofthin Cu films. Our calculations show that the resistivity increases significantly due to surface roughnessscattering and it is quite sensitive to both the amount and the nature of roughness. We determine the degree ofspecular scattering at rough surfaces by a parameter