Patent ID: 6842028

Claim:
An apparatus for testing a leakage protection reliability of an integrated circuit interconnection, comprising: a first comb-like pattern having one straight length portion and a plurality of tooth portions protruding from the length portion substantially parallel with one another and having substantially the same lengths; one serpentine-like pattern comprising a plurality of unit parts and at least one connection part; wherein each of the unit parts includes: two tooth parallel parts laterally spaced apart from the neighboring tooth portions by a certain distance, and extending substantially parallel therewith, a length parallel part formed at a level different from the level of the comb-like pattern and connecting the ends of the two tooth parallel parts and forming turning points with the tooth parallel parts, and two vias connecting the ends of the two tooth parallel parts with the both ends of the length parallel part through an interlayer dielectric layer and spaced apart from the end of the neighboring tooth portion by a minimum design length according to a design rule; wherein the connection part connects the ends of the neighboring two tooth parallel parts for connecting the two unit parts; and a second comb-like pattern having the same components as the first comb-like pattern and disposed at an opposite position from the first comb-like pattern, wherein: the end of the tooth portion of the additional comb-like pattern is located at the central position between the two tooth portions of the comb-like pattern under the connection part, and laterally spaced from the neighboring two vias by the minimum design length; and means for applying a defined bias voltage between the first and second comb-like patterns and the serpentine-like pattern to generate a potential difference between the patterns.