Modeling Electromigration Lifetimes of Copper Interconnects

A compact model for early electromigration failures of copper dual-damascene interconnects

A compact model for early electromigration failures in copper dual-damascene interconnects is proposed. The model is based on the combination of a complete void nucleation model together with a simple mechanism of slit void growth under the via. It is demonstrated that the early electromigration lifetime is well described by a simple analytical expression, from where a statistical distribution ...

Modeling the electromigration failure time distribution in short copper interconnects

Modeling the copper microstructure and elastic anisotropy and studying its impact on reliability in nanoscale interconnects

Background: Copper is the primary metal used in integrated circuit manufacturing of today. Even though copper is face centered cubic it has significant mechanical anisotropy depending on the crystallographic orientations. Copper metal lines in integrated circuits are polycrystalline and typically have lognormal grain size distribution. The polycrystalline microstructure is known to impact the r...

Modeling of Electromigration Induced Resistance Change in Three-Dimensional Interconnects with Through Silicon Vias

Electromigration (EM) is one of the main reliability concerns in copper interconnects. In particular, it is a critical issue for new emerging technologies, such as through silicon via (TSV) technology. In this work the impact of formation and growth of voids under a TSV located at the cathode end of a typical dual-damascene line is analyzed. The resistance change of the structure is numerically...

On-Chip Optical Interconnects: A Viable Approach

Three decades ago Gordon Moore predicted that number of transistors per integrated circuit (IC) would double every two years. Today the high performance ICs are counting upto two billion of transistors and working at 10 GHz clock frequencies. The on chip interconnects are going to be a major bottleneck to the performance of such ICs. The use of copper interconnects & low K dielectrics has provi...