A Study of Adaptive Mesh Refinement Techniques for an Efficient Capture of the Thermo-Mechanical Phenomena in Power Integrated Circuits

Numerical simulation (i.e. based on the Finite Element Method - FEM) is an important design method and tool that allows prediction of failure position of the Double Diffused Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (DMOS) devices and a comparative analysis of the robustness of different metallization topologies with regard to Thermal Induced Plastic Metal Deformation (TPDM). As the dimension of analyzed components is very small and multiple physical phenomena occur, the finite element mesh size and density is very important for the accuracy and efficiency of the analysis method. The aim of this paper is to present an Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) study for an efficient and accurate quantification by numerical simulation of the thermal induced stress and strain distribution in Power Integrated Circuits (PIC's). The study is demonstrated on simple 3D substructures commonly found at different high integration Bipolar CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technologies.