Measurement of buried oxide thermal conductivity for accurate electrothermal simulation of SOI device

Finite element simulations demonstrate that the thermal conductivity of the buried oxide is an important parameter for the modeling of the thermal behavior of silicon-on insulator (SOI) devices. There is uncertainty about the conductivity of different forms of SiO ₂, particularly that of buried oxides. This paper presents a novel approach to measure this conductivity, using structures that are compatible with standard bipolar or CMOS processes. Thermal conductivity values of 0.66 and 0.82 W/mK, respectively, were found for 300-nm BESOI and 420-nm SIMOX oxides at room temperature. The measured variations of thermal conducitivity with temperature agree well with bulk SiO₂ behavior. Better agreement between measurement and finite element simulation of MOSFET thermal resistance is obtained by using these extracted thermal conductivity values. It is also shown that the role of the silicon substrate in determining the thermal resistance of the device can be calculated using a simple analytical model. This is important when one wishes to calculate accurately individual thermal resistances of transistors in a given circuit