Crosstalk analysis in Carbon Nanotube interconnects and its impact on gate oxide reliability

The work analyses the crosstalk effects in Carbon Nanotube (CNT), and its impact on the gate oxide reliability. Using the existing models of CNT, the circuit parameters for CNT-bundle interconnect are calculated and the equivalent circuit has been developed to perform the crosstalk analysis. The crosstalk induced overshoot/undershoots have been estimated and the impact of the overshoot/undershoots on the gate oxide reliability in terms of failure-in-time (FIT) rate is calculated. A similar analysis is performed for Cu interconnects and comparisons are made with CNT based interconnect results. It has been found that the CNT based interconnect is more suitable in VLSI circuits as far as the gate oxide reliability is concerned.

1. Introduction

With the advancement of VLSI technology, the device and their interconnect dimensions have been shrunk from micron to submicron to nano meter regime. As the dimensions of the devices and their interconnections reach to the nano meter level, the bulk properties of the materials cannot be applied and the devices must be analyzed in atomic level. Thus the nano electronic devices open up a new era in search of new technology for circuit fabrication, new methodology of circuit design and analysis. Several researches have already been undergone by research group on the nano electronic devices [14], [16], [17], [20]. The different proposed nano electronic devices may be classified into either solid-state or molecular. The solid-state devices include resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs), single electron technology (SET), spin transistors, ballistic electron devices, etc. The molecular devices include organic transistors, bulk molecular logic and memory, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and monomolecular transistors. [2]