Presentation of a new time domain simulation tool and application to the analysis of advanced interconnect performance dependence on design and process parameters

The speed of integrated circuits is increasingly fixed by interconnect performances. To address this issue, the development of new back-end of line technology schemes and materials should be driven by predictions of associated benefits. A new tool was developed and coupled to electromagnetic software to carry out time domain simulations. As a result, the dependences of interconnect performances on process parameters and design rules were extracted for the 65 nm and 45 nm technology nodes.