Small is the next big thing: thermal phenomenon on the nanoscale electronic devices

Abstract

The ever increasing demand for faster processing of information led the electronic industry to depend on the ever decreasing size of the semiconductors. Gordon Moore, one of the cofounder of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a chip should double every two years. To continue progress in accordance with Moore's law, the chip manufacturing relied on the new nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and nanowires. The shrink from the micro scale to the nanoscale in the transistors has reduced the channel length and the size of the intense phonon electron interactions in the active region of the transistors to dimensions smaller than the phonon mean free path. The decreasing of dimensions leads to nanoscale hot spots in the drain region of the transistor. And, the introduction of the novel materials and non-traditional transistor geometries, which impede heat conduction tend to make heat removal more difficult. This article presents the heat phenomena in the nanotransistors, heat generation, nanotransistors hot spots, thermal modelling and proposed cooling methods.