Simulating 3D Ohmic Heating Effects in Metal

Introduction

A new feature has been added to Silvaco’s device simulator ATLAS, which allows the simulation of ohmic heating effects in metals using the Giga or Giga3D modules. The feature has been included in response to metal heating problems that increasingly occur in interconnects for very aggressive technologies.

Normally metals in device simulators are treated as either ohmic or Schottky contacts with little regard for their bulk resistivity, since this is usually insignificant compared to the resistivity of the underlying semiconductor.

The new feature now allows the ohmic resistance, and the heating it causes, to be taken into account for both 2D and 3D arbitrary device structures. The steady state simulations allow temperature dependent thermal resistivities and conductivities to be defined by the user, so any arbitrary metal could be defined.