Effect of current crowding on electromigration lifetime investigated by simulation and experiment

The impact of current crowding on the electromigration lifetime of various interconnect layout designs was investigated through simulations and experiments. Most 2D electromigration simulators use the conventional electromigration model which does not include the effect of current crowding on the electromigration lifetime while electromigration experiments have shown this effect to be important. A new model including this effect is discussed for electromigration simulator improvement in the future. Then the current crowding effect was experimentally investigated in detail in different interconnect layout designs. This has provided a good understanding of the current crowding effect that can be very useful to improve the reliability of multilevel interconnects in the design phase.