A primary cause of failure in microelectronic devices is void growth and movement in aluminum wire interconnects. In addition to thermal and mechanical stress, void evolution is driven by the electric field in the wire. Two new boundary element techniques, approximate Green's functions and Galerkin surface derivative evaluation, have been developed to assist in modeling the electromigration pro...

Electromigration tests were performed on passivated electroplated Au four terminal Kelvin line structures using the conventional in situ resistance monitoring technique. The stress conditions were a current density of 2.0 MA/cm with ambient temperatures ranging from 325°C to 375°C. The temperature coefficients of resistance (TCR) values were measured prior to current stressing to calculate the ...

This paper presents a methodology for quantitative analysis of the role of electromigration (EM) reliability and interconnect performance in determining the optimal interconnect design in low-WCu interconnect systems. It is demonstrated that EM design limits for signal lines are satisfied once interconnect performance is optimized.

We studied electromigration (EM) lifetimes and void growth at low cumulative failure probability. We carried out EM test in damascene Cu lines using sudden-death type test structures. Its cumulative failure probability ranges from 0.005 to 90%. To investigate the void growth behaviour, Cu microstructures was investigated. EM lifetime shows correlation with the void nucleation site and the void ...

A new heuristic description for electromigration-induced early resistance changes is given. The basis is formed by two coupled partial differential equations, one for vacancies, and one for imperfections. These equations are solved numerically for a grain boundary bamboo structure. It is shown that this model is capable of simulating the typical effects as observed in early resistance change me...