“New Driving Force for Electromigration in ULSI Interconnections and its Implication to IC Layout” by TAN Cher Ming, PhD, School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Date:  August 4, 2010 (Wednesday)
Time:  7:00pm – 8:30pm; 6:30pm networking
Venue:  PSDC, Room 2302, 1 Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah, 11900 Bayan Lepas, Penang

Admission is free

Refreshments will be served before the lecture.  Network and interact with like-minded engineers and researchers before the seminar begins.

Abstract

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-neck and Cu/low-k interconnection system become essential with interconnect line-width 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 interconnections 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 other 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 Black’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.

Speaker

Dr Tan Cher Ming received his Ph.D in Electronics from the University of Toronto, Canada in 1992.  He is presently a faculty staff in the School of EEE in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and adjunct senior scientist in SIMTech.  He has been working in Electronic industry for 10 years before joining the university in 1996.  His previous employment includes Fairchild Semiconductor, Hewlett Packard, Lite-On in Taiwan, and Chartered Semiconductor.

Upon joining the University, Dr Tan is active in providing consultation to the industrial.  Some of the companies that he has provided his consultation on reliability, failure analysis and maintainability are Infineon, Motorola, IBM, Applied Materials, Olympus, Rockwell and Vestas etc.

Dr Tan has awarded the Fellow of Singapore Quality Institute, Distinguished Professor in Asia by Mathwork USA, Listed in Who’s Who in the world, Marquis Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, and Madison Who is Who.  He is also holding a Faculty Associate position in Institute of Microelectronics, Singapore.  He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of the Electronic Devices Society of IEEE USA in the area of reliability and failure analysis.  He is also the Chair of Certified Reliability Program in the Singapore Quality Institute, founding chair of IEEE Nanotechnology Chapter in Singapore and founding chair of IEEE International Conference on Nanoelectronics.

Dr Tan has been invited to give talk in several international conferences on reliability and failure analysis, such as JEDEX, MRS and ICMAT.  He has published more than 200 papers in International Journal and conferences, and is an author of five books and chapters in the area of reliability and failure physics.  He is also serving as a reviewer for many International Journals and conferences such as IEEE IRPS, IPFA, MRS, Thin Solid Film, International J. of Quality and Reliability Management, Electrochem and Solid State Lett., IEEE Trans. on Nanotechnology, Journal of Applied Physics etc.