Assessment of Influence of Impedance Mismatch in ULSI Devices on Electromigration of Copper Interconnection Lines

In this work, the impact of impedance mismatch between on-die CMOS drivers and driven transmission lines on electromigration (EM) and Joule-heating failure mechanisms has been qualitatively studied. Signals corrupted by the impedance mismatch were experimentally measured within a 45-nm CMOS technolo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE transactions on device and materials reliability Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 231 - 235
Main Authors Livshits, P., Rysin, A., Sofer, S., Fefer, Y.
Format Magazine Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.03.2013
Subjects
CMOS integrated circuits
Electromigration
Electromigration (EM) and Joule heating
Impedance
impedance matching
integrated circuits
Inverters
on-die transmission lines
Power transmission lines
Reliability
Ultra large scale integration
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:In this work, the impact of impedance mismatch between on-die CMOS drivers and driven transmission lines on electromigration (EM) and Joule-heating failure mechanisms has been qualitatively studied. Signals corrupted by the impedance mismatch were experimentally measured within a 45-nm CMOS technology ULSI test chip. The signals' current waveforms were obtained using a SPICE simulator. These voltage and current waveforms have been taken as a basis for our calculations. The results reveal that distortions of current shape, which are caused by the mismatched output impedance of a CMOS driver, lead to substantial aggravation of the EM and Joule heating in a driven line. Furthermore, it was found that the impedance mismatch causes serious modifications of current shape of a CMOS inverter connected to the far end of the line. This in turn aggravates both EM and Joule heating in the next-stage line that loads this CMOS inverter.
ISSN:1530-4388
1558-2574
DOI:10.1109/TDMR.2012.2236556