| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/N32945/01 |
| Title: |
ULSI INTERCONNECTS: PROCESS MODELLING AND TEST FOR REL IABILITY AGAINST ELECTROMIGRATION AND STRESS-PROMOTES |
| Principal Investigator: |
O'Neill, Professor A |
| Other Investigators: |
|
| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
|
| Project Partners: |
|
| Department: |
Electrical, Electronic & Computer Eng |
| Organisation: |
Newcastle University |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 October 2000 |
Ends: |
30 November 2003 |
Value (£): |
208,247
|
| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
|
| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| Electronics |
Information Technologies |
|
| Related Grants: |
|
| Panel History: |
|
|
Summary on Grant Application Form |
|
The major cause of failure in IC manufacture is the back end metallisation. However, a feature of this which has received relatively little attention until recently is the impact of mechanical stress on reliability. No process modelling tools are available to directly estimate the effects of both stressmigration and electromigration on reliability. Stress measurements on single sub-micron interconnect tracks are also not currently possible. This programme will address these issues. A novel stress sensor will be optimised and fabricated and a process modelling capability will be established, building on existing in-house software for electromigration and the ANSYS finite element package for stressmigration. The simulator will take the specific details of the process and interconnect/via geometry, validated input data and details of other processing stages (eg annealing) and calculate the stresses in a multilevel interconnect line. The output of the model will then be passed to a modified electromigration simulator to test how stress affects reliability. The tool will be calibrated against experimental data obtained from the novel stress sensor as well as from more conventional techniques and then used to investigate design rules/ safe operation zones for several different back end processing applications.
|
|
Key Findings |
|
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
|
|
Potential use in non-academic contexts |
|
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
|
|
Impacts |
|
| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
|
| Date Materialised |
|
|
|
|
Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
|
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
|
| Project URL: |
|
| Further Information: |
|
| Organisation Website: |
http://www.ncl.ac.uk |