Realistic copper interconnect performance with technological constraints

Most interconnect performance evaluations with copper, such as, line delays and repeater analysis are done assuming a constant resistivity. However, increase in electron surface scattering and fractional barrier cross section area results in a higher effective Cu resistivity (ρ _eff) with dimensional shrinkage. This work models above effects, establishing reliable, future, resistivity trends for different barrier deposition technologies and thicknesses, wire temperature and copper/barrier interface quality. The resistivity trends are used to obtain realistic, future, interconnect performance metrics with Cu. These metrics are found to be a lot worse than predicted by a constant copper resistivity.