Self-annealing and seed-aging effects are probably among the most important topics of recent investigations on the microstructural changes in copper thin films and of their effects on electrical and optical properties. Aim of this work is the characterization of self-annealing and seed-aging effects together with their possible correlation. The combined analysis of resistivity and reflectivity of seed layer samples is also compared with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) results. Copper seed characterization of self-annealing effect evidences that mean grain size increase with time does not impact film resistivity only: surface roughness shows a 40% increase after 200 h from film deposition and the (1 1 1) preferential orientation of the copper crystallites parallel to the surface becomes more pronounced.Seed-aging effect study underlines a dependency of the …