Early failure of short-lead metal line and its EM characterization with Wheatstone bridge test structure in advanced Cu/ULK BEOL process

Author

Tae-Young Jeong ; Windu, Sari ; Dong-Cheon Baek ; Jinseok Kim ; Kyuho Tak ; Lee, Minhung ; Hyuniun Choi ; Sangwoo Pae ; Park, Jongho

Author_Institution

Technol. Quality & Reliability Group, Samsung Electron. Co., Ltd., Yongin, South Korea

fYear

2013

fDate

13-15 June 2013

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

Early failure of the short-lead metal line EM (Electromigration) is investigated. Applying Wheatstone bridge (WSB) test structure and 3-parameter lognormal distribution enables to reduce sample size and time-to-fail (TTF) variation governed by early fails causing a poor standard deviation, EM lifetime is accurately predicted and improved by ~280×. In particular, EM TTF at lower percentiles can be well represented by 3-parameter lognormal. With respect to physical aspects of void, EM behaviors of the short-lead and long-lead metal line are addressed based on experimental results compared with Monte-Carlo simulations to support the Blech´s back-stress effects.

Keywords

Monte Carlo methods; electromigration; failure analysis; integrated circuit interconnections; integrated circuit reliability; log normal distribution; stress effects; 3-parameter lognormal distribution; Blech back-stress effects; Monte-Carlo simulations; Wheatstone bridge test structure; advanced Cu-ULK BEOL process; electromigration characterization; sample size; short-lead metal line failure; time-to-fail variation; Electromigration; Mathematical model; Metals; Monte Carlo methods; Periodic structures; Reliability; Resistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC), 2013 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Kyoto

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-0438-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IITC.2013.6615569

Filename

6615569