IEEE S.F. Bay Area Council e-GRID's
BayAreaTech

MONDAY June 7, 2010
SCV Electron Devices Chapter
Speaker: Dr. Cher Ming Tan, School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Time: Pizza/drinks at 6:00 PM; Presentation at 6:15 PM
Cost: none
Place: National Semiconductor, Building E1, Conference Center, 2900 Semiconductor Drive, Santa Clara
RSVP: not required
Web: www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/eds

Interconnections are crucial to the operation of any integrated circuit as they provide networking for the billions of transistors in an IC.? As the technology node advances, transistors are getting smaller and operate faster.? This renders interconnections as bottle-necks and the Cu/low-k interconnection system becomes essential with interconnect line-widths going below 200 nm.? Also, it has been shown that the dominant failure mechanism for integrated circuits today is electromigration, an interconnect failure mechanism.? Electromigration is conventionally known to be due to the electron wind force.? Recent research on the physics of electromigration found that as the interconnection dimensions go below 200nm, electron wind force is no longer the dominant driving force.? In this talk, the various driving forces of electromigration will be presented, and the evidence of another dominant driving force apart from the electron wind force will be shown.? With the identification of the new driving force for electromigration, the accuracy of the Blackâ??s equation will be challenged.? As the electromigration aware IC layout design is also based on the concept of electron wind force conventionally, such new driving force demands a new paradigm in the IC layout design.? In this talk, this new paradigm will be presented, and the consequence of following the conventional electron wind force approach in IC layout design will also be discussed.