Modeling and analysis of temperature dependence of multiwall carbon nanotubes for VLSI interconnects

Abstract

For nano-scaled technology nodes, the density of active devices increases for Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) chip design. The large number of long interconnects are to be required to interface millions of active devices in an Integrated Circuit (IC). The impedance parameters of interconnects increase linearly as interconnects length increases, therefore the performance of an interconnect becomes more important compared to device performance at deep submicron technology. The present research, explores the possibilities to replace the traditional copper interconnects because its deficiencies like grain boundary, surface boundary and electromigration at nano-scaled technology nodes. Due to large electrical and thermal conductivity of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), CNT have been considered as alternative for long VLSI interconnects. CNTs are hollow tubes made from a sheet of carbon grapheme by rolling it up. These cylindrical shaped carbon molecules have attractive thermal and electrical properties which make it more suitable in the field of electronics, nanotechnology, optics, material science and other fields of technology. CNTs are classified as Single Walled Carbon Nonotube (SWCNT) and Multi Walled Carbon Nanotube (MWCNT) on the basis of its structure. SWCNTs are hollow tube rolled up from graphene sheets with similar diameter and SWCNT bundle consists of many such SWCNT tubes. Multi-Walled CNT (MWCNT) consists more than two rolled up hollow tubes having different diameters ranging from few nanometers to tens of nanometers. Both types of CNTs have same current carrying capacity but MWCNTs are easier to fabricate compared to SWCNTs because of its better control on the growth process. Such advantages of MWCNT attract most of the researcher towards the analytical modeling and performance analysis of MWCNT based interconnects for nanoscaled technology nodes.