Tin in solder or some other meals can form spiky crystals when under stress. These whiskers can form short circuits if not properly insulated or not alloyed with other metals.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
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Metal whiskering is a phenomenon that occurs in electrical devices when metals form long whisker-like projections over time.
That's what the article says. EM is a subset of metal whiskering. It's not a similar thing, it's an example of it.
Tiger, you’re very similar to many of the semiconductor EEs I know :) and I mean that in a teasing-but-you-know-cause-you-work-in-the-industry way. Yeah, we only really care about whiskering in the context of electrical devices. That’s what it’s saying. Read the “Mechanics” section, it tells you nothing about actual electromigration doing it; they describe an E field encouraging metal ions in a fluid to make a reaching whisker and link to electromigration because it technically is “electromigration” making the targeted whisker occur. But IC-style electromigration is not causing the whisker, clearly cause no currents are flowing, which is why I took the time to write the explanation in the first place.
But just because the semiconductor community called it whiskers so it shares the name with the Big Whiskers, does not make the process anywhere close to similar. The current densities that cause absolutely not present for the stress ones, which the wiki article is about.