Calibrated fast thermal calculation and experimental characterization of advanced BEOL stacks
Xinyue Chang, Herman Oprins, Melina Lofrano, Vladimir Cherman, Bjorn Vermeersch, Javier Díaz Fortuny, Seongho Park, Zsolt Tökei, Ingrid De Wolf
Abstract
In this work, we present a fast evaluation methodology to aid the thermal-aware BEOL design with a quick estimation of out-of-plane layer equivalent thermal properties based on design rules for dimensions and densities. The method is calibrated with a detailed FE thermal simulation and is applicable to realistic back-end-of-line (BEOL) connectivity. With this method, a breakdown analysis is performed on an advanced 3 nm 14-layer BEOL stack. Thermal contributions of individual layers and impacts of dielectric and metallization choices are benchmarked. Furthermore, a dedicated multi-layer BEOL test vehicle is designed in a 28nm foundry CMOS technology. The out-of-plane thermal coupling is experimentally characterized, and consistent measurement and modeling results are obtained.