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Modeling the electromigration failure time distribution in short copper interconnects

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journal contribution
posted on 2009-07-14, 11:17 authored by Vincent Dwyer
The electromigration EM lifetime in short copper interconnects is modeled using a previously developed means of generating realistic interconnect microstructures combined with the one-dimensional stress evolution equation of Korhonen et al. J. Appl. Phys. 73, 3790 1993 . This initial analysis describes the void nucleation and subsequent growth in lines blocked at one end and terminated with a pad at the other. For short copper interconnects, the failure time is largely spent on void growth, and, for sufficiently short lines (≤ 50 mm), the growth is largely steady state. This allows for the development of a simple expression for the variation of the failure time with microstructure. Assuming that the diffusion activation energies are normally distributed, the permanence property of summed lognormals leads to a roughly lognormal distribution for EM failure times. Importantly for EM design rules, linear extrapolation on lognormal plot is found to slightly underestimate interconnect reliability.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Citation

DWYER, V.M., 2008. Modeling the electromigration failure time distribution in short copper interconnects. Journal of Applied Physics, 104 (5), 053708

Publisher

© American Institute of Physics

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publication date

2008

Notes

This article was published in the serial, Journal of Applied Physics [© American Institute of Physics]. It is also available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2970171

ISSN

0021-8979

Language

  • en

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