Circuit level interconnect reliability study using 3D circuit model

Integrated circuit (IC) reliability is gaining increasing concerns in IC technology with decreasing device size, and the impact of interconnect failure mechanisms on IC failure rate increases significantly with decreasing interconnect dimension and increasing number of interconnect levels. In this work, we attempt a first step in the study of interconnect electromigration reliability in integrated circuit using a complete 3D circuit model. 3D circuit model is necessary because all integrated circuits are 3D in their actual physical implementation, and 3D model is essential for the study of today interconnect reliability. As temperature and stress distributions in the interconnect are crucial to its reliability, we demonstrate our method through the computation of their distributions in a simple inverter circuit under typical normal operating condition, and the locations of the electromigration weak spots in the interconnect system are identified. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.