Thermal Evaluation for Monolithic 3D Integrated Circuits Based on Gate-all-Around Transistors

In this work, we proposed a monolithic 3D (M3D) integrated circuits (ICs) based on Gate-all-around field effect transistors (GAAFET), and the self-heating effect (SHE) of the M3D ICs is evaluated in detail. A comprehensive thermal evaluation scheme for the M3D ICs is desirable since that higher integration density and more interconnected metals have great obstruction to the thermal dissipation in M3D ICs. Therefore, we systematically investigated the impact of the nano-scale monolithic inter-tier vias (MIVs), power source distribution topology, and the number of GAAFET channels on the thermal characteristic of M3D ICs. In addition, an alternative approach with RC thermal network for accelerating thermal equation solving is presented, which is implemented in a SPICE-based simulator and is capable of fitting finite element method (FEM) simulation results. We expected the comprehensive thermal evaluation for M3D ICs can invoke more research interests in thermal modeling and thermal-aware physical design.