Replacement buried power rail in backside power delivery
Aspects of the disclosure provide a method for fabricating a semiconductor device. The method includes forming dummy power rails on a substrate by accessing from a first side of the substrate that is opposite to a second side of the substrate. Further, the method includes forming transistor devices and first wiring layers on the substrate by accessing the first side of the substrate. The dummy power rails are positioned below a level of the transistor devices on the first side of the substrate. Then, the method includes replacing the dummy power rails with conductive power rails by accessing from the second side of the substrate that is opposite to the first side of the substrate.
1. A semiconductor device, comprising:
transistor devices and first wiring layers formed on a first side of a substrate;
second wiring layers formed on a second side of the substrate that is opposite to the first side; and
conductive rails formed buried in the substrate, the conductive rails interconnecting the second wiring layers on the second side of the substrate with the transistor devices and the first wiring layer on the first side of the substrate,
wherein the conductive rails are parallel power rails to provide power to the transistor devices that are formed on the first side of the substrate,
wherein the conductive rails are formed of a conductive stack including a conductive material with a threshold temperature for thermal stability being lower than 500° C.,
wherein a longitudinal direction of the semiconductor device and of each of the parallel power rails is a second direction that is orthogonal to a first direction extending from the first side to the second side of the substrate,
wherein respective side walls of the parallel power rails extend throughout an entirety of the substrate in the first direction and are parallel to each other throughout the entirety of the substrate in the first direction,
wherein the second wiring layers form a power delivery network to deliver power from an external power source to the parallel power rails,
wherein the parallel power rails include a first set of power rails connected to a low-voltage level and a second set of power rails connected to a high-voltage level, power rails in the first set and power rails in the second set being alternately arranged in a third direction perpendicular to both the first and second directions,
wherein the transistor devices include cells arranged in at least a first row and an adjacent second row, each of the first and second rows extending in the longitudinal direction of each of the parallel power rails, and
wherein the cells in the first row have corresponding high-power and low-power connections arranged in a first orientation with respect to the third direction and the cells in the second row have corresponding high-and low-power connections arranged in a second orientation with respect to the third direction, the second orientation being opposite to the first orientation, and a first power rail in the first set of power rails connected to the low-voltage level provides the low-voltage level to the low-power connections of the cells in both the first row and the second row.
2. The semiconductor device of claim 1 , wherein a depth of the conductive rails is greater than 500 nanometers.
3. The semiconductor device of claim 1 , wherein a width of each of the parallel power rails in the third direction is at least twice a width of routing tracks formed on the first side of the substrate.