TaN Resistor Reliability Studies

We present TaN thin-film resistor life test data for three different temperatures and three different current densities. A surprising decrease of resistance was observed over the course of the life tests. We show an exponential dependence of temperature for this degradation, with a more complicated current dependence. A relatively high activation energy of 2.3 eV was extracted from the life tests. Median time to failure predictions for the 10 m wide, 100 m long resistor investigated, are higher than 1 x 107 hours at 5.2 x 106 A/cm2 current density and base plate temperatures up to 50 °C