A proposal for a standard procedure for moderately accelerated electromigration tests on metal lines

Experimental Studies of Al Interconnections

“…The pitfalls of SWEAT in its ability to detect process changes and the correlation between its test results and those of conventional electromigration tests are reported in references (Dion 1993;Giroux, Gounelle, Mortini and Ghibaudo 1995;Menon and Choudhury 1997;A. Scorzoni, Impronta, Munari and Fantini 1999;Foley, Molyneaux and Mathewson 1999).…”

“…With the bulk diffusion dominating, the electromigration process becomes microstructure insensitive (A. Scorzoni, Impronta, Munari and Fantini 1999). This may render SWEAT meaningless in predicting metal line electromigration performance under normal operating conditions.…”

“…Two alternative wafer level electromigration tests are developed (Scorzoni, Impronta, Munari and Fantini 1999;Foley, Molyneaux and Mathewson 1999).…”

“…On the other hand, for bamboo line and multiple level metallization, the method is inadequate. Scorzoni et al (A. Scorzoni, Impronta, Munari and Fantini 1999) proposed a moderately accelerated electromigration test by keeping the maximum temperature to 250 • C, and stress current density to a level such that the temperature rise due to Joule heating is limited to below 40 • C. The test structure used is similar to NIST, but with a 'Babal tower' at the end regions. These end regions are designed so as to reduce the problem of the occurrence of severe ion flux divergence at the bamboo/polycrystalline junction.…”

A-Si:H TFT Nonvolatile Memories and Copper Interconnect for Rigid and Flexible Electronics

“…The 800nm thick Cu thin film with a 10nm thick Ta barrier layer on a SiN x coated Si wafer was etched into 7µm x 800µm lines with probe pads open at both ends using the plasma-based process (33). The photoresist patterned Cu film was exposed to a Cl 2 -containing plasma and then dipped into a dilute HCl solution (34,35,36).…”