Opposite Impact of Temperature Difference Direction on Electromigration Failure in N-type Versus P-type Metal

With the advancement of scaling-down and 3D integration, metal wires in ICs are experiencing higher current densities and larger multi-directional temperature differences, which may introduce new challenges to electromigration (EM) reliability. In this work, 3D multi-physics kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) is utilized to investigate the impact of temperature difference on EM failure in n-type and p-type metal. The results indicate: (1) For n-type metal wires (W in this work), when the temperature increases along the direction of the current (ΔT> 0), EM failure is accelerated. Conversely, when the temperature decreases along the direction of the current (AT < 0), EM failure is slowed down. (2) For p-type metal wires (Ru in this work), the situation is opposite of that for n-type metals. Additionally, the Time to Failure (TTF) for both n-type and p-type metal wires can be fitted as an exponential function of ΔT.