Spatially Resolved Conductivity of Rectangular Interconnects considering Surface Scattering – Part I: Physical Modeling

Accurate modeling of interconnect conductivity is important for performance evaluation of chips in advanced technologies. Surface scattering in interconnects is usually treated by using Fuchs-Sondheimer (FS) approach. While the FS model offer explicit inclusion of the physical parameters, it lacks spatial dependence of conductivity across the interconnect cross-section. To capture the space-dependency of conductivity, an empirical modeling approach based on "cosh" function has been proposed, but it lacks physical insights. In this work, we present a 2D spatially resolved FS (SRFS) model for rectangular interconnects derived from the Boltzmann transport equations. The proposed SRFS model for surface scattering offers both spatial dependence and explicit relation of conductivity to physical parameters such as mean free path and specularity of electrons and interconnect geometry. We highlight the importance of physics-based spatially resolved conductivity model by showing the differences in the spatial profiles between the proposed physical approach and the previous empirical approach. In Part II of this work, we build upon the SRFS approach to propose a compact model for spatially-resolved conductivity accounting for surface scattering in rectangular interconnects.