Stress development during the electrodeposition of copper from additive-free, acidic CuSO4 electrolyte was analyzed by dynamic stress analysis, an in situ characterization technique that combines electrochemical impedance spectroscopy with cantilever curvature. Two sources of stress account for the dynamic stress behavior in the frequency range of 0.1 Hz to 25 Hz. The high frequency region is controlled by electrocapillarity (charge-induced stress). The stress is 180. out of phase with the input potential, and its amplitude is relatively small. Low frequency is dominated by the growth stress of the Cu film, which under the conditions examined here is tensile. The amplitude of the stress response increases with decreasing frequency and its phase angle shifts from + 180 degrees to + 90 degrees. Both of these transitions are potential dependent and can be simulated from the electrochemical impedance, making use of separate stress-charge coefficients for double layer charging and Cu deposition. Since these stress-generating mechanisms have dramatically different frequency dependency, Cu deposition is a nice demonstration that highlights the attributes of DSA; i.e., using frequency to separate the various stress contributions. (C) The Author(s) 2014. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved.