Microstructural impact on electromigration: A TCAD study

Abstract

Current electromigration models used for simulation and analysis of interconnect reliability lack the appropriate description of metal microstructure and consequently have a very limited predictive capability. Therefore, the main objective of our work was obtaining more sophisticated electromigration models. The problem is addressed through a combination of different levels of atomistic modeling and already available continuum level macroscopic models. A novel method for an ab initio calculation of the effective valence for electromigration is presented and its application on the analysis of EM behavior is demonstrated. Additionally, a simple analytical model for the early electromigration lifetime is obtained. We have shown that its application gives a reasonable estimate for the early electromigration failures including the effect of microstructure.