Electromigration current limit relaxation for power device interconnects

Electromigration (EM) is a key limiting factor for designing lateral power devices. The metal interconnect for power devices features multiple fingers with strapped metal layers to carry large current, which leads to unique EM behaviors. In this paper, we present a new EM methodology for power device interconnects to account for these effects. The new model features circuit performance based failure criteria and allows more EM current limit for power devices with multiple fingers than the conventional rule. This provides relaxed EM rules for more efficient power device design.