Determination of the impact of field enhancement in low-k dielectric breakdown

Abstract

Test structures have been designed to detect the impact of field enhancement on low-k dielectric breakdown at the tips of combs in comb structures. An analysis methodology has been proposed to separate the impact of area and field enhancement. Modeling utilizes characteristic lifetimes at various area ratios. The proposed model, when compared with direct fitting of the Weibull distribution, improves lifetime estimates by 2.5 orders of magnitude at 0.01% and reduces variance of the confidence bound by 73%.