Electromigration in narrow and large damascene copper lines

Author

Girault, V. ; Terrier, F. ; Grégoire, M.

Author_Institution

STMicroelectronics, Crolles, France

fYear

2004

fDate

18-21 Oct. 2004

Firstpage

71

Lastpage

74

Abstract

This paper presents a study on electromigration performances of narrow and wide damascene copper lines with a view to always be aware of the limitations of circuit lifetime with respect to this failure mechanism. It appears that narrow and large lines do not present the same activation energy. Narrow lines are characterized by a rather high activation energy, around 0.90 eV, referring to copper migration at the copper/top barrier interface, whereas large lines present an activation energy around 0.74 eV, apparently referring to copper migration at the grain boundaries. These experimental results suggest a careful choice in interconnect design, depending on the circuit application (digital/analog), to always provide a robust circuit.

Keywords

copper; electromigration; grain boundary diffusion; grain size; integrated circuit interconnections; integrated circuit metallisation; integrated circuit reliability; 0.74 eV; 0.90 eV; Cu; activation energy; circuit reliability; copper/top barrier interface migration; deposited copper average grain size; electromigration; grain boundary migration; large damascene copper lines; narrow damascene copper lines; Copper; Electromigration; Extremities; Failure analysis; Grain boundaries; Integrated circuit interconnections; LAN interconnection; Stress; Temperature; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Integrated Reliability Workshop Final Report, 2004 IEEE International

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8517-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IRWS.2004.1422742

Filename

1422742