Investigations on the thermal behavior of interconnects under ESD transients using a simplified thermal RC network

This work focuses on the interconnect heating during fast ESD transients. A simplified thermal RC network is used to study the behavior of interconnects and to predict their failures, which can be an open circuit or a latent failure due to the decrease of the electromigration lifetime. The RC model is validated by both experiments and finite difference simulations. We observe that the melting of the interconnect system can be considered as instantaneous. Simulations in both solid and liquid phase of the metal are in good agreement with experiments. HBM and MM transients are investigated and a relationship to correlate these ESD stresses with the TLP measurements is studied in depth. We show that a square pulse of 80 ns may be used to predict an HBM stress and a 45 ns pulse is proposed for MM. © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.