Effective line length of test structure and its effect of area scaling on TDDB characterization in advanced Cu/ULK process

Author

Jeong, Tae-Young ; Choi, Seung Man ; Baek, Dong Cheon ; Windu, Sari ; Lee, Miji ; Park, Jongwoo

Author_Institution

Technol. Quality & Reliability, Quality & Reliability Team, Samsung Electron. Co., Ltd., Yongin, South Korea

fYear

2012

fDate

15-19 April 2012

Abstract

This study focuses on the cause of deviation of Poisson area scaling trend used for IMD-TDDB reliability of Cu/ULK (k=2.55) process. The effects of test structure, such as the serpent-comb and comb-comb structure, on IMD-TDDB reliability are comprehensively investigated with a simple resistance model to illustrate voltage drop and effective length of metal line. Since effective line length of the serpentine-comb decreases with increasing voltage so as to misread lifetime prediction, care must be taken in the selection of test structure and bias condition for advanced BEOL process development with ULK and its reliability qualification.

Keywords

copper; dielectric materials; electric breakdown; electric resistance; integrated circuit reliability; integrated circuit testing; metals; stochastic processes; BEOL process development; Cu; IMD-TDDB reliability; Poisson area scaling trend; TDDB characterization; ULK process; comb-comb structure; inter-metal dielectric time dependent dielectric breakdown; lifetime prediction; line length; metal line; reliability qualification; resistance model; serpent-comb structure; serpentine-comb; test structure; voltage drop; Computer aided software engineering; Dielectrics; Leakage current; Metals; Reliability; Resistance; Stress; IMD TDDB; area scaling; effective line length;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), 2012 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA

ISSN

1541-7026

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1678-2

Electronic_ISBN

1541-7026

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IRPS.2012.6241877

Filename

6241877