Abstract
Carbon allotropes have generated much interest among different scientific communities due to their peculiar properties and potential applications in a variety of fields. Carbon nanotubes and more recently graphene have shown very interesting electrical properties along with the possibility of being grown and/or deposited at a desired location. In this Review, we will focus our attention on carbon-based nanostructures (in particular, carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons) which could play an important role in the technological quest to replace copper/low-k for interconnect applications. We will provide the reader with a number of possible architectures, including single-wall as well as multi-wall carbon nanotubes, arranged in horizontal and vertical arrays, regarded as individual objects as well as bundles. Modification of their functional properties in order to fulfill interconnect applications requirements are also presented. Then, in the second part of the Review, recently discovered graphene and in particular graphene and few-graphene layers nanoribbons are introduced. Different architectures involving nanostructured carbon are presented and discussed in light of interconnect application in terms of length, chirality, edge configuration and more.
Highlights
Over the past few decades, the increasing progress in most technological areas from biomedicine to strategic deployment to meteorological forecasting has been largely benefitting from continuous and massive advances achieved in the field of computational technologies
Existing interconnect technologies involving Cu/low-k lines and theirs evolutionary downsizing for sub-100 nm size interconnects face a number of important challenges
In this Review, we will focus our attention on carbon-based nanostructures which could play an important role in the technological quest to replace copper/low-k for interconnect applications
Summary
Over the past few decades, the increasing progress in most technological areas from biomedicine to strategic deployment to meteorological forecasting has been largely benefitting from continuous and massive advances achieved in the field of computational technologies. Packed conducting material immersed in a dielectric environment will further introduce significantly larger parasitic capacitance, enhancing the delay of the signal propagation and limiting the overall operational bandwidth This scenario clearly suggests that any length below 22 nm, which represents the current microelectronics community standard, copper will reveal to be inadequate for interconnect applications. In every single case, much remains to be done before one or more of these technologies can be realistically integrated with existing CMOS platforms while retaining their novel high-performance capabilities In this Review, we will focus our attention on carbon-based nanostructures (in particular carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons) which could play an important role in the technological quest to replace copper/low-k for interconnect applications. We refer the Reader to more detailed literature regarding alternatives to carbon-based interconnects here presented (3D Integrated Circuit and Optical Interconnects) [6,7,8]
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