The effects of defects on the early failure of metal interconnects

A method that predicts the effect of particular defects on the failure rate of metal interconnections in semiconductor integrated circuits due to electromigration is presented. The defects of interest are missing material that reduces the effective cross section of the conductor at the point of the defect. Reliability measures for the conductor are computed from a given defect distribution. These defects appreciably increase conductor failure rate during early life but have little effect on median life for linewidths above 1 μm. However, for defect densities typically encountered in current semiconductor manufacturing environments a rapid decrease in median life is predicted for conductors less than 0.30 μm wide. This result extends the practical data for submicron conductors. Poorer median life as well as poorer yield due to these defects will ultimately limit the trend toward narrower linewidths unless a way is found to overcome this problem