Analysis of top- and side-contact MLGNR interconnects: impact on crosstalk, stability, and electromigration

Abstract

In a recent nanoregime, the cross-coupling capacitance plays an important role due to the high packing density of integrated circuits. It can significantly affect the overall interconnect performance of an IC that can reduce the reliability, durability, and stability of silicon technology. In order to alleviate these problems, this work demonstrates shielded side-contact (SC) and top-contact (TC) multilayered graphene nanoribbon (MLGNR) interconnect to demonstrate stability and cross talk reliability issues. At 32 nm technology, an equivalent single-conductor Pi-type network is proposed for shielded SC- and TC-MLGNR for different spacing and interconnect lengths. Besides, the impact of temperature and higher current density is demonstrated. It is observed that the conventional interconnect material such as Cu exhibits 52.31% faster electromigration breakdown as compared to graphene at 1000 K. Further, the cross talk-induced delay is analyzed for shielded TC-and SC-MLGNR using driver–interconnect–load arrangement. An improved crosstalk-induced delay of 59.36% and 95.97% is observed for SC-MLGNR as compared to a TC-MLGNR with active shielding for an average spacing range of 5–20 nm at local and global lengths, respectively. Furthermore, the power delay product and peak noise of active-shielded SC-MLGNR exhibit on an average 96.82% and 38.20% improvement in comparison with active-shielded TC-MLGNR for the spacing of 5 nm at global length. Moreover, the Nyquist plot is used to demonstrate higher stability of SC-MLGNR than TC-MLGNR at 32 nm technology. Therefore, the overall system performance demonstrates that the active-shielded SC-MLGNR can be treated as a suitable choice for future VLSI technology.