Investigation of the impact of conductor surface roughness on interconnect frequency-dependent ohmic loss

The impact of conductor surface roughness on the ohmic loss of interconnects is quantified through, the application of perturbation theory to the development of the solution for the electromagnetic fields in the vicinity of a periodically corrugated air-metal interface. The analysis leads to the extraction of a frequency-dependent effective conductivity that captures the impact of surface roughness on interconnect ohmic loss. Availability of such an effective conductivity eliminates the need for detailed modeling of conductor roughness in interconnect parasitic extractors and full-wave electromagnetic field solvers aimed at signal integrity-driven electrical modeling.