Reconfigurable double gate carbon nanotube field effect transistor based nanoelectronic architecture

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and carbon nanotube field effect transistors (CNFETs) have demonstrated extraordinary properties and are widely accepted as the building blocks of next generation VLSI circuits. However, no nanoelectronic architecture has been proposed which is solely based on carbon nanotubes and carbon nanotube field effect transistors. The reasons include lack of a self-assembly technology which could form complex carbon nanotube structures, or, absence of a reconfigurable carbon nanotube device which could provide functionality, reliability, and performance via reconfigurability. In this paper, I propose a novel double gate carbon nanotube field effect transistor (RDG-CNFET), which is reconfigurable to be open, short, FET, or via. Layers of orthogonal carbon nanotubes with electrically bistable molecules sandwiched at each crossing form a dense array of RDG-CNFETs and programmable interconnects, and constitute a nanoelectronic architecture of manufacturability (via regularity), reliability (via reconfigurability), and performance (via device density). Simulation based on CNFET and molecular device compact models demonstrates superior logic density, reliability, performance and power consumption of the proposed RDGCNFET based nanoelectronic circuits compared with the existing, e.g., molecular diode/MOSFET based nanoelectronic circuits.