Data processing: structural design – modeling – simulation – and em – Electrical analog simulator – Of physical phenomenon
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-01
2001-09-11
Niebling, John F. (Department: 2812)
Data processing: structural design, modeling, simulation, and em
Electrical analog simulator
Of physical phenomenon
C716S030000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06289298
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention is related to the design of optimized metalization structures and, more particularly, to modeling of magnetic interactions in circuits to simulate the electrical properties of metalization structures from their physical characteristics.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It is desirable to be able to model quickly and accurately the characteristics of metalization structures, such as inductors, interconnects or the like, fabricated in integrated circuits on conductive substrates. Because known conductive substrates interact strongly with electromagnetic fields generated by currents in the integrated circuit, an accurate electrodynamic model of the electromagnetic interactions is required in order to properly determine the electrical properties of inductors or other systems of metals, in the integrated circuit. One family of techniques that have been used for this purpose includes so-called full wave solvers that were designed primarily for antenna simulation. However, the full wave solvers are very inefficient, i.e., slow, when employed in an attempt to model structures that are relatively small compared to the wavelength of a signal propagating in metalization structured fabricated in integrated circuits. Another family of techniques includes so-called static or quasi-static solvers that are significantly faster than the full wave solvers in arriving at a model, but yield very inaccurate results for integrated circuits fabricated on or in the vicinity of conductive substrates.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
These and other problems and limitations of prior known modeling arrangements and methods are overcome by employing electrodynamically determined electric field and/or current distributions in conjunction with statically determined electric field distributions localized to metalization structures on a conductive substrate to model metal structures to be fabricated on a substrate. Specifically, the static electric field distributions are subtracted from the electrodynamic field distributions and the results are used to determine the electrodynamic component of self and mutual interactions between metalization structures to be fabricated on the conductive substrate. Then, statically determined current interactions of the metalization structures to be fabricated are determined and superimposed on the electrodynamic interactions. The results of the superimposition are used to generate the overall circuit metal structure to be fabricated on the conductive substrate.
In a specific embodiment of the invention, a static determination of electric field distributions caused by a time invariant point current source is obtained in the absence of the substrate and subtracted from the electrodynamically obtained electric field distributions from the interaction of a vector potential caused by a time variant point current in the presence of the substrate. The resulting difference values that are valid for all metalization structures fabricated on this type of substrate are stored in a look-up table. Then, when a simulation of the interactions, for example, of an inductor or other system of metals, on a conductive substrate is made the weakly spatially dependent electrodynamic component of the substrate interactions from the look-up table are superimposed on a very efficiently determined static solution for the inductor or other system of metals being simulated. The results of the superimposition are used to generate the overall integrated circuit metal structure on the conductive substrate.
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Belk et al., “The simulation and design of Integrated inductors”, Proceedings of the 36th Design Automation Conference, pp. 988-993, Jun. 1999.*
Ehsani et al., “Computer-aided desing and application of integrated Ic filters”, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 11, issue 1, pp. 182-190, Jan. 1996.
Agere Systems Guardian Corp.
Niebling John F.
Whitmore Stacy
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