Yield Enhancement of Face-to-Face Cu–Cu Bonding With Dual-Mode Transceivers in 3DICs.

When more than one dies are stacked vertically in 3-D integrated circuits (3DICs), the overall system yield degrades significantly. While each die can be tested before stacking, failures in 3DIC interconnects could jeopardize the entire system. In this paper, a dual-mode transceiver is proposed as a built-in-self-test/repair solution to improve the yield of direct face-to-face copper thermocompression bonding (Cu–Cu bonding). The proposed transceiver could improve the Cu–Cu bonding-based interconnect reliability with the introduction of two operation modes: the ohmic mode when Cu–Cu bonding presents low resistance and the capacitive coupling mode when Cu–Cu bonding is showing any sign of failure with high resistance at the bonding interface. Such mode sensing is self-contained in the transceiver itself with the help of the proposed resistance sensor. In this paper, we discuss the modeling of Cu–Cu bonding and the proposed transceiver design with power, latency, jitter, and crosstalk simulations followed by the design guideline for the practical implementation with yield analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]