Ru has been considered a candidate to replace Cu-based interconnects in VLSI circuits. Here, a methodology is proposed to predict the resistivity of (Ru) interconnects. First, the dependence of the Ru thin film resistivity on the film thickness is modeled by the semiclassical Mayadas-Shatzkes (MS) approach. The fitting parameters thus obtained are then used as input in a modified MS model for nanowires to calculate wire resistivities. Predicted experimental resistivities agreed within about 10%. The results further indicate that grain boundary scattering was the dominant scattering mechanism in scaled Ru interconnects.Comment: 4 pages. 2 figure

We observe that non-zero gate bias applied during a high temperature anneal following hot-carrier degradation (HCD) impacts degradation recovery in nFETs. The devices are arranged into custom-built arrays and fabricated in a commercial 40 nm bulk CMOS technology and the FET anneal is induced by on-chip poly-Si heaters. The anneal is modeled using Stesmans' passivation model for P b -defects in hydrogen gas (H 2 ). Negative gate bias improves the anneal, in line with studies on biased passivation of process-induced P b -defects.

Using the deterministic version of our hot-carrier degradation (HCD) model we perform a statistical analysis of the impact of random dopants (RDs) on HCD in n-FinFETs. For this, we use an ensemble of 200 transistors with different configurations of RDs. Our analysis shows that changes in the linear drain currents have broad distributions, thereby resulting in broad distributions of device lifetimes. While lifetimes are nearly normally distributed at high stress biases, under voltages close to the operating regime the distribution has a substantially different shape. This observation considerably complicates extrapolation from accelerated stress conditions, thereby suggesting that a comprehensive statistical treatment of the impact of RDs is required.

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