Strategy for electromagnetic interconnect modeling

In order to design on-chip interconnect structures in a flexible way, a computer-aided design approach is advocated in three dimensions, describing high-frequency effects such as current redistribution due to the skin effect or eddy currents and the occurrence of slow-wave modes. The electromagnetic environment is described by a scalar electric potential and a magnetic vector potential. These potentials are not uniquely defined and in order to obtain a consistent discretization scheme, a gauge transformation field is introduced. The displacement current is taken into account to describe current redistribution and a small-signal analysis solution scheme is proposed based upon existing techniques for fields in semiconductors.