Electromigration failure of circuit-level interconnections

The performance of very large-scale integrated circuits is significantly determined by the reliability of interconnection materials. Electromigration, or diffusion of the interconnection material induced by the high current density used in the connections, gives rise to voids which are a major culprit in device failures. Materials solutions are possible, but the device fabrication processes are more technologically advanced than the performance of interconnection materials. A variety of reliability tests can be conducted, but if these tests are accelerated over real-world conditions, they may introduce new failure modes, producing essentially useless statistics. For advances in device performance to continue efficiently, alloy design, failure analysis, reliability testing and lifetime characterization must be thoroughly applied.