It is well known that the doped Sn can effectively suppress the electromigration of Cu thin-film interconnects in integrated circuits. In this paper, the first-principles method was introduced to investigate the suppression mechanism. All the calculations were performed on Sn or Cu adatom/Cu (0 0 1), (1 10) and (1 1 1) surface systems within local density approximation. As a Sn adatom was attached to the Cu surface, stable Cu-Sn bonds were formed. The energy calculations show that the Sn/Cu system was more stable than Cu/Cu system with the same structure. Analysis of density of states shows that the nearest neighbor Cu atoms were stabilized by Cu-Sn bond relative to the Cu atoms which are far away from the adatom. The diffusion barrier energies were calculated and found to be consistent with the experimental results. Also, bond population analysis shows that stronger covalent bonds were formed between Sn and Cu relative to that between Cu and Cu. All the results indicate that the Cu-Sn bond plays an important role in the suppression of Cu electromigration. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.