Dual-Purpose Metal Inter-layer Via Utilization in Monolithic Three-Dimensional (M3D) Integration

Monolithic three-dimensional integrated circuit (M3D-IC) technology can potentially improve transistor density, performance and power efficiency for future IC designs. To attain maximum benefits of M3D-IC technology, the silicon footprint overhead caused by metal inter-layer via (MIV) should be reduced because MIV passes through the silicon. In this paper, we present dual-purpose MIV utilization where MIV serves two purposes: 1. interconnect and 2. device terminal. The active devices that are formed by using MIV such as MIV-based capacitor and MIV-based transistor are studied in detail. We demonstrate the advantage of these dual-purpose MIV-based device utilization in on-chip circuits by implementing an inverter. Simulation results suggest that the inverter designed with our approach occupies 13844 nm2 silicon area. The silicon area utilization of the inverter is reduced by up to 24% compared with the conventional transistor-level implementation of inverter in M3D-IC process by utilizing MIV-based transistor.

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