Graphene Interconnect Lifetime: A Reliability Analysis

Understanding the breakdown current density is not enough for establishing the reliability performance of graphene interconnects. It is more important to know how graphene wires degrade with time under constant current stress and how that compares with conventional interconnects. This letter investigates the lifetime of graphene interconnect under constant high current stress. Under a stress current density of 20 MA/cm² at 250°C exposed to air, the mean time to fail of a 3-μm-wide 100-μm-long graphene interconnect is approximately 6 h, slightly worse than the extrapolated electromigration lifetime of a copper interconnect capped with CoWP at the same stress current density. Raman study shows that the interconnect failure is mainly caused by defect formation due to graphene oxidation. This suggests that optimizing the capping material for graphene interconnect will substantially improve the reliability lifetime of graphene interconnects.