Towards electro-thermo-mechanical simulation of integrated circuits in standard CAD environment

Through mechanical coupling, thermal effects can lead to drift in circuits´ electrical performances, as well as integrated circuits reliability issues. It is thus necessary to consider thermal, mechanical and electrical effects all together in a self-consistent manner, This work focuses on the electro-thermo-mechanical simulation of integrated circuits in the target of ICs reliability monitoring from the early design stages. An electro-thermo-mechanical simulation tool was developed using the Cadence^® environment and the Spectre^® simulator. The simulation principle is based on the direct simulation approach with a mixed compact and finite elements modelling. Three networks, i.e. the electrical, the thermal and the mechanical networks, are directly generated, coupled then simulated using a single simulator, i.e. Spectre^®. This paper discusses our networks modelling approaches. The way the three networks are coupled and simulated is described. The thermo-mechanical model is validated through simulation results, compared with results obtained using COMSOL^® A first thermo-mechanical simulation of a simple integrated circuit featuring a power device is presented.