An Accurate Determination of the Characteristic Impedance of Lossy Lines on Chips Based on High Frequency S-Parameter Measurements

Thomas-Michael Winkel, Lohit Sagar Dutta, Hartmut Grabinski Laboratorium fur lnformationtechnologie, University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany

Abstract
A very accurate, novel determination o the characterisf tic impedance o interconnectson semiconductingsubstrates f has been developed. The method is based upon high frequency S-parameter measurements of two transmission lines of different lengths. The influence of the contact structures of the measurement probes are taken into account with the help o three additional measurements. f The mathematical backround o the method is presented. A f comparison o the results obtained from measurements and f from calculations is given and shows an excellent agreement.

I. Introduction
The correct characterization of interconnects on semiconductor substrates has become a more and more urgent problem due to the fact that the electrical behavior of interconnects have started to dominate the performance of chips. The simulation of the signal propagation on interconnects is an essential process during chip design, especially for very complex integrated circuits e.g. VLSIand WSI-chips as well as for interconnects on MCM semiconductor carrier substrates. Therefore, models are needed, which are derived from high frequency measurements. This ensures that effects like signal delay, signal reflections at line discontinueties and ohmic losses as well as substrate influences, that results in propagation of different signal modes, are taken into account. In the quasi-TEM approach all transmission lines are completely characterized by their R, L, C and G line parameters or by their propagation constants together with their characteristic impedances. Methods for the determination of the characteristic impedance of interconnects proposed in the literature are often limited to lines on insulating lossless substrates [1]. There are only a few authors e.g. [2], [5], [4] that have proposed methods for the determination of the characteristic impedance of lines on lossy substrates based on high frequency S-parameter measurements. In [2] the consideration of the microwave probe contact pad characterization is not very useful. In [5] and [4] the disadvantages of the proposed methods are the

large number of measurements that have to be performed and which in general decreases the accuracy of the measurement results. In [4] the decreasing exactness of the method for high frequencies and good conducting substrates is an additional disadvantage. The correct determination of the characteristic impedance of interconnects on semiconducting substrates based on high frequency measurements is still very problematic. Therefore, the aim of this work is a complete and very accurate characterization of transmission lines, with arbitrary line widths and lying on semiconducting substrates, by a minimum number of measurements. The proposed method in this paper uses the S-parameter measurements of only two transmission lines of different lengths for the calculation of the propagation constant and simultaneously of the characteristic impedance. In order to perform a correct characterization of the lines, the contact structures of the measurement probes together with the fringing effects of the contact pads were characterizedwith the help of three additional measurements, as will be described later in section 111.

11. Measurement setup

In order to perform measurements on lines on semiconductor substrates a special test chip with passiv line structures was designed. A number of different single line structures with various line widths (1 pm ... 200 pm) and line lengths (500 pm ... 19350 pm) were integratedon this test chip and fabricated on silicon wafers with different substrate resistivities. For the presented example we performed the measurements on a silicon wafer with a substrate resistivity of 0.1-0.2 Qcm. The thickness of the silicon substrate was taken to be 500 pm, the oxid thickness 500 nm, and the metal layer thickness (aluminium with 1% silicon) 700 nm. The waferwas fabricatedwithout passivation. In order to ensure a well defined wave propagation along the investegated lines, the signal lines were surrounded by ground lines, which were electrically connected to the silicon substrate (figure 1). Due to the large distance existing between the signal and ground lines of approximately 100 pm, it is ensured that the behaviour of the

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lines correspondsmore to interconnects on integrated circuits than to coplanar lines (as reported in [5] and [3]).

were fabricated by cascade microtech on special alumina substrate. As a result of the calibration procedure, the reference planes of the measurements had to be t,aken at the contact points of the microwave probes. Due to the usage of coplanar microwave probes, special contact structures had to be designed as depicted in figure 2.

1 1 Theory 1.
The chain parameter matrix A of a single line terminated by its characteristic impedance Z, is given by:

Figure 1. Cross section of the investigated lime geometry In the case of high frequency signal propagation on lines the currents and voltages can not be measured directly, since these quantities have a wave character and are well defined for purely TEM wave propagation only. The amplitudes and phases of the waves can be determined using scattering

/k

y denotes here the propagation constant of thr: line and 1 the line length. If the chain parameter matrix in equation (1) is given, the characteristic impedance of a single line can then be calculated fiom:

2 ,

Figure 2. Geometry of the investigated line and the contact structures parameter (S-parameter) measurements. Further definitions concerning scattering parameter matrices and the relation between the scattering parameters and the scattering chain parameters are given in the appendix in [7]. The S-parameter measurements were performed with a HP 8720B 2 port network analyzer in a frequency range fiom 200 MHz to 20 GHz. The network analyzer was connected through special flexible microwave cable to cascade coplanar microwave probes with characteristic impedances of 50 8. The short-gpen-load-through (SOLT) calibration, as was proposed by cascade microtech for the HP 8720B network was used to calibrate the network analyzer i n analyzer [6], combination with the flexible microwave cables and microwave probes, The reference standards used for the calibration

In general, the chain parameter matrix of a line as given in equation (1) cannot directly be measured, since all measured transmission lines are embedded in appropriate contact structures (figure 2), which will be described by the unknown 2x2 matrices TAand &, that represent the error networks. Therefore, one can formulate the matrix of the measured (index m) scattering chain parameter matrix T,,, as follows:

where

(4)

is the scattering chain parameter matrix of the line. Thus, one can ascertain two scattering chain parameteir matrices,

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denoted by T,, and Tm2, two lines of different lengths, of from measurements:

The chain parameter matrices of the line segments are

T,,

T,*T' .1T B

A , for the open pad line, A, for the pad line segment, and A, for the single line segment. A,, Ap and A , are given by:

(5)

In order to eliminate e.g. TB one has to first calculate the inverse matrix of T,, and then multiply the result from the left with Tm2:

T Tm . ' = TA . T . ,T 2 m l I

.r'.r'.T' B I , A
(7)

with In equation (10) ysand 7 are the propagation constants , of the single line (with line width w) and of a line with the same width as the pad, respectively. Z,,, and Zp are the characteristic impedances of these two lines. I,, lp and 1, are the line lengths as depicted in figure 3. The unknown matrix TA can be calculated through a simple transformation (A- to T-parameter transformation) from the normalized chain parameter matrix A ' :

and
(9)

As mentioned above, the unknown matrix TA describes the error network consisting of only line segments as depicted in figure 2 and figure 3.
I I
~

I I

A0

AP

As
1s

with A=A,i4,;4,. The impedance 2, in equation (1 1) represents the reference impedance of the microwave probes, in our case 50 Q. In a similar manner to equation ( 2 ) one can in the next step calculate the measured characteristic impedance. Therefore, the chain parameter matrix

single line segment open !pad padline line I segment c o n t a c t plane o f the microwave p r o b e s (=reference plane)

Figure 3. Subdivided signal line of the error network TA

can be calculated from the left hand side of equation (7), i.e from the scattering chain parameter matrix Tm2Tm;', with the help of a known matrix transformation (Tparameter to A-parameter). One can then calculate the impedance Z, from A,, which we want to define as the "measured substitute impedance", by (cf. equation (2)):

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r -

Thus, equation (13) can be converted into a polynomial with only one unknown parameter, namely, the characteristic impedance Z,,:

In , the influences of the pad are still included. In order Z to calculate the true characteristic impedance Z,, from the measured substitute impedance, one has now to calculate ,Z , in addition to (13), from the right hand side of equation (7) by using equations (2, 7-9) in a similar way:

Notice that (14) includes only the elements of TA. The radical of the right hand side in equation (14) is a rational fraction with the numerator N(p) and the denominator D(p) represented by polynomials including only the unknown parameter ys,y Z,, and Z, (cf.( 10) and (1 1)). , , Finally, in order to determine Z,, one has to equate (1 3) with (14) and eliminate ys,y and Z,. The propagation , , constant ys can be determined after equating coshys.(l2-1,)
=

Since the largest exponent of Z,,, in (1 8) is 2 the solution of the polynomial with respect to Z,, is simple. Nevertheless, the constants of the polynomial are very complex and will therefore not be given in this paper. The fringing fields of the open pad line and the step (pad line segment to single line segment) behave like additional small virtual lines, which can be characterized from an additional S-parameter measurement (reflection coefficient S l l ) on a seperate pad structure. These calculated virtual additional line lengths have to be added in equation (IO) to the line lengths 1, and I respectively. ,

111. Measurement results and compari,sonwith calculated data

In order to compare the characteristic impedance as derived from measurements with theoretically calculated values, the R, L, C and G parameters had to be first calculated by the analytical method as proposed in [9]. The characteristic impedance were then derived as follows: R +joL G +jwC The results presented in figure 4 and 5 were obtained from measurements carried out on single lines on a silicon substrate with a 0.1-0.2 Qcm resistivity. In figures 4 and 5 the measuredmagnitudes and phases, respectively, of single lines with different line widths (w=5 pm, 10 pm and 50 pm) are shown and compared with the calculated values from equation (17). A comparision of the measured and calculated results shows very good agreement over the whole frequency range. The difference between the measured and calculated phases for the 50 pm line is a result of the usage of uncertain input values for the calculations: Due to the tolerances in the nominal values, e.g. in line widths and thickness as well as in the oxid thickness resulting from the etching processes, these values cannot be expressed very exactly. In addition, the influence of the substrate conductivity is very strong, especially for wide lines.

amll

as proposed by Mondal and Chen e.g. [SI. As mentioned above, three additional measurements have to be performed for the characterization of the pad stucture. Two of them are performed on transmission lines of different line lengths but having the same widths as the pads, in our case 50 pm. , Using these measurements the propagation constant y can be calculated in the same way as ys (cf. (15)) by using equations (5-7). Since the signal line segment and the pad line segments have now the same widths (figure 3) only two matrices A , and A, are necessary for the calculation of the unknown matrix TAwitih

and I, = lp+ls. Using equations (1 1) and (16) the characteristic impedance Z, of the pad line can be expressed by: (17)

where ZmSp the measured substitute impedance of the is transmission line with the line width w=50 pm similar to (13).

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ZSaO

, , , ,
meorured

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

1.20/,

, , ,

, , ,

, ,

, ,

Frequency ( G H z )

Figure 4. Comparision of the measured and calculated magnitudes of the characteristic impedances for different line widths (w=5 pm, 10 pm and 50 pm) on a silicon substrate
450

Figure 6. Measured attenuation constant for different line widths (w=5 pm, 10 pm and 50 pm) on a silicon substrate

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

270

I
Figure 5 . Comparision of the measured and calculated phases of the characteristic impedances for different line widths (w =5 pm, 10 pm and 50 pm) on a silicon substrate Furthermore, it can be shown that the comparision of the R, L, C and G parameters, as calculated from the measured propagation constant and characteristic impedance, with the calculated values as derived from [9] also shows a very good agreement. As mentioned above, the propagation constant was calculated simultaneously using equation (1 5 ) . The results are presented in figure 6 and 7 respectively. Through a further simple calculation one can obtain the phase velocity from the phase constant. The phase velocity was normalized with c,, as depicted in figure 8. The investigated lines are now completly characterized.

Frequency ( G H z )

Figure 7. Measured phase constant for different line widths (w=5 pm, 10 pm and 50 pm> on a silicon substrate
0.30

, , , ,

, , , ,

0.24

n=5 p m

w=10 p m

r=50 p m

Figure 8. Measured phase velocity normalized with co for different line widths (w=5 pm, 10 pm and 50 pm) on a silicon substrate

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V. Conclusion
A novel method for the determination of the characteristic impedance of lossy lines on semiconductolr substrates based on high frequency S-parameter measurements has been presented. The method is distinguished by the following properties: - Only a minimum number of measurements are necessary for the characterization of a line. - The pad structure are considered as line elements. - The fringing effects of the pad are taken into account by a measurement on an open pad structure. The presented method is very precise and shows therefore excellent agreement in comparision with theoretically calculated results.

Dylan F. Williams, Roger B. Marks, "'Accurate Transmission Line Characterization", IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters, Vol. 3, No. 8, pp. 247-249, August 1993 Stefan Zaage, Enno Groteluschen, "Characterization of the Broadband Transmission Behavior of Interconnections on Silicon Substrates", IEEE Transizctionson Components, Hybrids, and Manufacturing Technology, Vol. 16, No. 7, pp. 686-691, November 1993 Cascade Microtech, "Microwave Wafer Probe Calibration Constants", Instruction Manuar' Thomas-M. Winkel, L. S. Dutta, H. (habinski, E. Groteliischen, "Determination of the Propagation Constant of Coupled Lines on Chips Based on High Frequency Measurements", IEEE Multi Chip Module Conference 1996, February 1996, accepted paper for publication Jyoti P. Mondal, Tzu-Hung Chen, "Propagation constant determination in microwave fixture deembedding procedure", IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. 36, No. 4, April 1988
E. Groteluschen, L.S. Dutta, S. Zaage, "Full-wave analysis and analytical formulas for the line parameters of transmission lines on semiconductor substrates", Integration the VLSIjournal,Vol. 16, pp. 33-58, 1993

References
Roger B. Marks, Dylan F. Williams, "Characteristic ImpedanceDetermination IJsing Propagation Constant Measurement", IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters, Vol. 1, No. 6, pp. 141-143, June 1991
W.R. Eisenstadt, Y . Eo, "S-Parameter-Based IC Interconnection Transmission Line Characterization", IEEE Transactions on Components, Hybrids and Manufactoring Technology, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 483490, August 1992

Stefan Zaage, "MeDtechnische Charakterisierung des Breitband-Ubertragungsverhaltens von Leitungen auf Silizium-Substraten", Ph.D. Thesis, University of Hanover, August 1993

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