Short line electromigration characteristics and their applications for circuit design

Abstract

Technology scaling has led to severe electromigration degradation for advanced interconnects. Taking full advantage of the Blech effect benefit has become more and more important for circuit design to overcome this EM performance degradation. Due to the wide range of circuit design layout variations, understanding the EM characteristics of the short lines closely related to the real circuit and chip design applications is needed. In this study, EM characteristics of a wide range of different short line structures are investigated. These structures include simple short line segments, short line segments with branches and with passive passing lines on top, and long lines with only a short portion carrying current. Implications of these results to circuit and chip design are also discussed.