1/f/sup alpha / noise and fabrication variations of TiW/Al VLSI interconnections

Abstract
Noise measurements were utilized to detect differences in fabrication processes on the layered TiW/Al metallization system. A dual-channel AC bridge system was used to measure the current noise of packaged 1.8- mu m-wide thin-film interconnections fabricated by a variety of processing parameters. The quick, nondestructive noise measurements were able to discriminate relative film group reliabilities and correlated well with results obtained from more conventional median-time-to-failure (MTF) testing.