A simple metal-semiconductor substructure for the advanced thermo-mechanical numerical modeling of the power integrated circuits

The lifetime of power DMOS devices subjected to Thermal Induced Plastic Metal Deformation (TPMD) is highly dependent on the design of the metallization systems and thus requires the understanding of temperature, stress and strain distribution. This paper introduces and studies via numerical simulations with finite element method (FEM) a simple three dimensional (3D) transistor substructure commonly found in different high integration BCD technologies, for the assessment of thermo-mechanical phenomena in order to identify the areas of high stress accumulation and failure mechanisms.