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Invited Talk: Introduction to Electromigration-Aware Physical Design

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Invited Talk: Introduction to Electromigration-Aware Physical Design Invited Talk: Introduction to Electromigration-Aware Physical Design Jens Lienig 1st Author Dresden University2nd Author of Technology 3rd Author 1st author's affiliationInstitute of Electromechanica2nd author'sl andaffiliation Electronic Design (IFTE)3rd author's affiliation 1st line of address 010621st lineDresden, of address Germany 1st line of address 2nd line of address 2nd linewww.ifte.de of address 2nd line of address number, incl. Telephone number, incl. country code TelephoneEmail: number, [email protected] incl. country country codemail 1st author's email address codel ABSTRACT diffusion due to concentration gradients, (2) material migration Electromigration is increasingly relevant to the physical design of caused by temperature gradients, (3) material migration caused by electronic circuits. It is caused by excessive current density stress mechanical stress, and (4) material migration caused by an in the interconnect. The ongoing reduction of circuit feature sizes electrical field. This last case is often referred to as has aggravated the problem over the last couple of years. It is “electromigration”, which is the subject of this talk. therefore an important reliability issue to consider The copper or aluminum interconnects of an electronic circuit are electromigration-related design parameters during physical polycrystalline, that is, they consist of grains containing crystal design. In this talk, we give an introduction to the lattices of identical construction but different orientation. As electromigration problem and its relationship to current density. current flows through such a wire, there is interaction between the We then present various physical design constraints that affect moving electrons – a sort of “electron wind” – and the metal ions electromigration. Finally, we introduce components of an in these lattice structures. Atoms at the grain boundaries electromigration-aware physical design flow. especially will fall victim to the electron wind, that is, they will be forced to move in the direction of the flow of electrons. Thus, in Categories and Subject Descriptors time, copper or aluminum atoms will accumulate at individual B7.2[Integrated Circuits]: Design Aids grain boundaries, forming so-called “hillocks” in the direction of the current. At the same time, so-called “voids” can appear at the General Terms grain boundaries (Figure 1). While the hillocks can short-connect Algorithms, Design, Verification. adjacent interconnects, the voids reduce the current flow in particular locations until the point of interconnect failure. Keywords Electromigration, current density, physical design, layout, Voids interconnect, interconnect reliability 1. INTRODUCTION The reliability of an electronic system is a central concern for developers. This concern is addressed by a variety of design measures, for example the choice of materials that are suitable for Grain Boundaries the intended applications. As the structural dimensions of Hillocks electronic interconnects become ever-smaller, new factors come to bear, which reduce reliability and which previously were negligible. In particular, there are material migration processes in electrical wires, which cannot be ignored anymore during the Figure 1. Hillock and void formations in wires due to development of electronic circuits. electromigration (Photo courtesy of G. H. Bernstein und R. Frankovic, University of Notre Dame) “Material migration” is a general term for various forced material transport processes in solid bodies. These include (1) chemical Many electronic interconnects, for example in integrated circuits, have an intended MTTF (mean time to failure) of at least 10 This is a minor revision of the work published in the proceedings of years. The failure of a single interconnect caused by SLIP'05, pp. 81-88, electromigration can result in the failure of the entire circuit. At http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1053355.1053374. the end of the 1960s the physicist J. R. Black developed an Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for empirical model to estimate the MTTF of a wire, taking personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are electromigration into consideration [1]: not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy A E otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, MTTF = ⋅exp a (1) requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. J n k ⋅T ISPD’06, April 9–12, 2006, San Jose, CA, USA, pp. 39-46. Copyright 2006 ACM 1-59593-299-2/06/0004…$5.00. where A is a constant based on the cross-sectional area of the If the current direction of an excessive current is kept constant interconnect, J is the current density, Ea is the activation energy over an extended period of time, voids and hillocks appear in the (e.g. 0.7 eV for grain boundary diffusion in aluminum), k is the wire. For this reason, analog circuits or power supply lines in Boltzmann constant, T is the temperature and n a scaling factor digital circuits are particularly susceptible to the effects of (usually set to 2 according to Black [1]). It is clear that current electromigration. When the current direction varies, for example density J and (less so) the temperature T are deciding factors in in digital circuits with their alternating capacitive charging and the design process that affect electromigration. discharging in conductors, there is a certain amount of This talk concentrates on the possibilities during physical design compensation due to a material flow back (self-healing effect). of manipulating current density in order to obviate the negative Nonetheless, interconnect failures are still possible, with thermal effects of electromigration on the reliability of electronic migration playing a major role. interconnects. We will first explain the physical causes of Furthermore, the susceptibility of wires to electromigration electromigration, and then introduce ways of influencing current depends on grain size and thus on the distribution of grain sizes. density during the physical design of an electronic circuit. Smaller grains encourage material transport, because there are Although the observations mainly concern analog circuits or more transport channels than in coarse-grained material. The power supply lines in digital circuits, they are also of relevance result of this is that voids tend to appear at the points of transition for most of today’s digital designs. from coarse to fine grains, since at these points atoms flow out faster than they flow in. Conversely, where the structure turns from fine grains to coarse, hillocks tend to form, since the 2. THE ELECTROMIGRATION PROCESS inflowing atoms cannot disperse fast enough through the coarse Current flow through a conductor produces two forces to which structure. the individual metal ions in the conductor are exposed. The first is These sorts of variations in grain size appear in interconnects at an electrostatic force Ffield caused by the electric field strength in every contact hole or via. Because the current here commonly the metallic interconnect. Since the positive metal ions are to encounters a narrowing of the conductive pathway, contact holes some extent shielded by the negative electrons in the conductor, and vias are particularly susceptible to electromigration. this force can be ignored in most cases. The second force Fwind is generated by the momentum transfer between conduction Diffusion processes caused by electromigration can be divided electrons and metal ions in the crystal lattice. This force works in into grain boundary diffusion, bulk diffusion and surface diffusion the direction of the current flow and is the main cause of (Figure 3). In general, grain boundary diffusion is the major electromigration. migration process in aluminum wires [5][7], whereas surface diffusion is dominant in copper interconnects [4][6][8][9]. (c) Force on metal ions resulting Interaction of from momentum transfer from electric field on the conduction electrons metal ions (b) (a) << Fwind Ffield - Anode AlAl+ Cathode - + - Figure 3. Illustration of various diffusion processes within the E - - lattice of an interconnect: (a) grain boundary diffusion, (b) bulk diffusion, and (c) surface diffusion. Figure 2. Two forces are acting on metal ions which make up Detailed investigations of the various failure mechanisms of the lattice of the interconnect material. Electromigration is the electromigration can be found in [2] - [5]. result of the dominant force, i.e. the momentum transfer from the electrons which move in the applied electric field. In a homogeneous crystalline structure, because of the uniform 3. DESIGN CONSTRAINTS AFFECTING lattice structure of the metal ions, there is hardly any momentum ELECTROMIGRATION transfer between the conduction electrons and the metal ions. However, this symmetry does not exist at the grain boundaries 3.1 Wire Material and material interfaces, and so here momentum is transferred much more vigorously from the conductor electrons to the metal It is known that pure copper used for Cu-metallization is more ions. Since the metal ions in these regions are bonded much more electromigration-robust than aluminum. Copper wires can weakly than in a regular crystal lattice, once the electron wind has withstand approximately five times more current density than reached a certain strength, atoms become separated from the grain aluminum wires while assuming
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