Erasmus Langer
Siegfried Selberherr
Oskar Baumgartner
Hajdin Ceric
Johann Cervenka
Siddhartha Dhar
Robert Entner
Otmar Ertl
Wolfgang Gös
Klaus-Tibor Grasser
Philipp Hehenberger
René Heinzl
Clemens Heitzinger
Andreas Hössinger
Gerhard Karlowatz
Markus Karner
Hans Kosina
Ling Li
Gregor Meller
Goran Milovanovic
Mihail Nedjalkov
Alexandre Nentchev
Roberto Orio
Vassil Palankovski
Mahdi Pourfath
Philipp Schwaha
Viktor Sverdlov
Oliver Triebl
Stephan Enzo Ungersböck
Martin-Thomas Vasicek
Stanislav Vitanov
Martin Wagner
Paul-Jürgen Wagner
Thomas Windbacher
Robert Wittmann

Roberto Orio
Msc
orio(!at)iue.tuwien.ac.at
Biography:
Roberto Lacerda de Orio was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1981. He studied electrical engineering at the State University of Campinas, where he received a master's degree in 2006. He joined the Institute for Microelectronics in September 2006, where he is currently working on his doctoral degree. His scientific interests include electromigration, modeling, and simulation.

Electromigration, Modeling, and Simulation

Highly integrated microelectronic circuits (e.g., microprocessors) require dense interconnects with dimensions down to some 150 nm. With the resulting increase in current density in the interconnects, electromigration-induced failure becomes a more and more challenging issue. Significant advances have been made by choosing copper instead of aluminum as an interconnect metal, because copper has an improved electromigration bulk resistance. State-of-the-art copper interconnect technology imposes new challenges for electromigration reliability Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) solutions. One major problem of copper interconnects is high diffusivity at the interfaces to cap and barrier layers. In particular, when new materials and processes are introduced, the adhesion between copper and the attached layers is increased so that the interfacial diffusivity is reduced to the level of the diffusivity of the grain boundaries. This means that the microstructure of the interconnects, i.e., the network of grain boundaries, the crystal orientation inside the grains, and the stress dependence of the grain bulk diffusivity, plays a crucial role in determining the interconnect behavior under the impact of electromigration. For an efficient electromigration simulation, all driving forces for atom migration should be taken into account. These forces are due to concentration, voltage, temperature and stress gradients. Moreover, the induced stresses cause the anisotropy of the self-diffusion process and should also be considered. Currently, the electromigration model has been implemented in FEDOS (Finite Element Diffusion and Oxidation Simulator) for three-dimension geometries. All important driving forces have been taken into account in the vacancy transport equation, and the anisotropic material transport generated by the stresses has also been implemented.


Vacancy concentration in a typical copper interconnect via.


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