Impact of anomalous skin effect on metal wire for terahertz integrated circuit

Abstract

Operating frequency of integrated circuits is going toward terahertz region. In such high frequency region, device modeling is a crucial issue. This paper focuses a phenomenon called anomalous skin effect. Due to skin effect, current in metal wire concentrates toward metal surface as the frequency becomes higher. Near terahertz region, the skin depth becomes around 100 nm and less. When the skin depth becomes comparable to the mean free path of electron in metal, surface scattering becomes significant. We investigate the anomalous skin effect on on-chip metal wires and show the impact on the wire characterization.