Transient Electro-Thermal Investigations Of Interconnect Structures Exposed To Mechanical Stress

Investigations of state-of-the-art integrated circuit designs clearly show that the temperature in interconnect structures is becoming the dominant and straitening factor for system performance. In this work we combine three-dimensional transient electro-thermal simulations with a finite element formulation of the thermomechanical stress problem in order to study the evolution and development of mechanical stress in complex layered interconnect structures at different operating conditions.