SEMINAR ON

CARBON NANOTUBE IN
INTERCONNECTS

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

SUBMITTED BY:-
Akash Kabi
Reg no : 2002060030
EEE 1
Contents:-
• Introduction..
• What are interconnects…?
• Evolution of interconnects.
• Is there need of replacement…?
• Electromigration:-A key evil
• Carbon nanotube:- A potential solution..
• Basic structure:-Carbon nanotube
• Classification based on chirality
• Classification based on concentricity
• Trouble shooter:- Carbon nanotube
• Challenges
 Introduction…
 Continuous advancements in integrated circuit (IC) technology have resulted in smaller
device dimensions, larger chip sizes, and increased complexity. The demand for VLSI
circuits with higher speed and component density is also increasing continuously .
 During recent past, various IC designers employed only metallic interconnections (such as
Al or Cu) but due to their persistent limitations researchers are forced to look after several
other possibility of using Graphene or organic material based interconnections in the near
future.
 Carbon Nanotubes: Tiny tubes about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair consist of
rolled up sheets of carbon hexagon. Discovered in 1991 by researchers at NEC, they have
the potential for use as minuscule wires or in ultra small electronic devices.
 Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have unique atomic arrangement and band structure that is
responsible for their outstanding electrical and mechanical properties. These extraordinary
properties make CNTs one of the most revered interconnect materials in current nanoscale
technology.
 What are interconnects… ?
 Interconnects are the wired connections between
various devices and components in an integrated
circuit. As the clock frequency and operating frequency
of the electronic devices is increasing, going up to
several GHz, the effects of these wired connection
cannot be ignored anymore.

 Present Day Interconnects:- Aluminum, Copper .

 In current nanoscale regime, interconnects are

categorized in three layers as per their lengths: local,
intermediate, and global. The first and second layers of
interconnects from the top are global, the third and
fourth layers are semi-global/intermediate, and the
lowest layers are local. Vias are the metal fillings
enabling inter-level wire connections. Interconnects are
stacked with dielectric material between two layers or
between one layer to transistor
Evolution of Interconnects
1. Aluminium Interconnect

• Al has been used to form metal interconnects because

of its low resistivity and silicon compatibility. As
device dimensions are reduced, the current density
increases.

• This results in reduced reliability of VLSI circuits that

is due to the electromigration and hillock formation,
causing electrical shorts between successive levels.
 Continued…
2.Copper interconnects
• Copper (Cu) with close to half the resistivity (1.7
µΩ cm) of Al demonstrates ten times better
performance in terms of electromigration. Thus,
it emerged as the most appropriate material for
VLSI interconnect in late 90s.

• Adding to the merit, Cu has higher melting point

(1,357 K) than aluminum (933 K) that provides
an advantage over aluminum in terms of stress
and electromigration effects.
 Is there a Need of Replacement…?
• In current deep submicron (DSM) technology, feature size
continues to shrink whereas the clock frequency continues to
increase. This advancement leads the interconnect
technology into a new era where it has to face certain
challenges such as electromigration, higher resistivity due to
surface boundary scattering, signal integrity, delay
uncertainty.
• Presently, the devices are much smaller in dimension and
faster in comparison to the interconnects. The overall
performance of a chip is determined by the interconnect and
not the device or gate delay
• With technology scaling, wires are placed closer to each
other with higher aspect ratios. This leads to large coupling
capacitance that causes Interconnects crosstalk noise and
excessive signal delay. The inductive effects are also facing
an upward trend due to higher clock frequencies, faster
transition (rise/fall) time and longer signal wires.
 A Key Evil:-
•
Electromigration
When a high current density passes through a metal interconnect, the momentum of current-
carrying electrons may get transferred to the metal ions during the collision between them.
Due to the momentum transfer, the metal ions may get drifted in the direction of motion of
electrons. Such drift of metal ions from its original position is called the electromigration
effect.
Effects of EM: Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)
Once the metal ions get started to shifting from its original
is an indication of the life
position, these will create problems in the interconnect. It could
result in an excess of ions accumulation in a particular location of span of an integrated circuit.
deficient of ions. So either Hillocks or Void could occur in the metal MTTF is calculated using
interconnect. Black’s equation as bellow.
 CARBON NANOTUBE : A Potential Solution
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have unique atomic arrangement and band structure that is
responsible for their outstanding electrical and mechanical properties. These extraordinary
properties make CNTs one of the most revered interconnect materials in current nanoscale
Some of these properties are briefly discussed below:
technology.

(a) They can conduct large current at smaller cross-sectional area

without any signal deterioration while simultaneously avoiding
electromigration problems that are otherwise prevalent in metallic
interconnects.

(b) As the feature size reduces, the performance of Cu interconnects

severely degrades due to the increased surface scattering thereby,
drastically reducing the effective mean free path. However, in contrast
to copper the CNTs supports ballistic flow of electrons with an electron
mean free path of several micrometers that strongly motivates
researchers to replace Cu by CNTs.

(c)Each problems like electromigration, hillock formation can be

solved by use of CNT.
 Basic Structure :- Carbon Nanotube
• Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are made by rolling up of sheet
of graphene into a cylinder. These nanostructures are
constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to (1.32 ×
108):1 that is significantly larger than any other material
• Metallic CNTs have aroused a lot of research interest for
their applicability as VLSI interconnects due to high
thermal stability, high thermal conductivity, and large
current carrying capability. A CNT can carry current
density in excess of 103 MA/cm2, which can enhance the
electrical performance as well as eliminate
electromigration reliability concerns that plagues current
nanoscale Cu interconnects
• While forming into graphene, three atomic orbitals of the
carbon atom, 2s, 2px, and 2py, are hybridized into three
sp2 orbitals. These sp2 orbitals are in the same plane while
the remaining 2pz is perpendicular to other orbitals. The σ
bonds between the adjacent carbon atoms are formed by
the sp2 hybridized orbitals, whereas the 2pz orbitals form
the π bonds that are out of the plane of graphene
Classification Based on (Chirality):-
A graphene sheet is a single layer of carbon atoms packed into 2D honeycomb lattice structure. CNT,
considered as rolled-up graphene sheet, have the edges of the sheet joint together to form a seamless
cylinder. The dashed arrows in show the circumferential vector C , which indicates the rolling up
direction for CNT. The vector is defined as
C = n1aˆ1 + n2aˆ2 where a1 and a2 are the lattice vectors of graphene and n1 and n2 are the chiral
indices.
Depending on chiral indices, CNTs
can be classified to:-

 Zig Zag structures

 Armchair structures

 Chiral structures
Detailed description:-
1) For Arm chair structures:-
n1=n (n=m)
n2=m

2) For Chiral structures:-

n1=n (n!=m)
n2=m

3) For Zig Zag structures:-

n1=0
n2=n
Classification Based on (concentricity):-
Depending on the number of concentrically rolled-up graphene sheets,
CNTs are also classified
• Single-walled (SWNT)

• Double-walled
(DWNT)

• Multiwalled CNTs
(MWNT)

• Bundled CNTs(BWNT)
Brief
description…..
S.W.N D.W.N M.W.
.T
The structure of SWNT can be .T is considered as a
DWNT N.Tconsists of
MWNT
conceptualized by wrapping a special type of MWNT two or more
one-atom-thick layer of wherein only two numbers of rolled-up
graphene into a seamless concentrically rolled up concentric layers of
cylinder. graphene sheets are graphene
present.
Trouble Shooter:-Carbon
nanotube
• A dense CNT Bundle local interconnect with ideal
metal nanotube contacts has resistance much
lower than that of a Cu interconnect of identical
dimensions .

• Resistance of a single CNT(SWCNT or MWCNT) is

very high ,a bundle of CNTs should be used as
interconnects .

• Various studies and surveys have shown that

CWNT reduced cross talk noise ,
capacitance ,Inductance.
Challenges :-
• There are several major technical challenges that impede widespread application of CNTs in
future electronics. Some of these challenges are more application specific, for instance, the
controlled synthesis and placement of CNTs is a main challenge in transistor applications
• Impurities

• Interface

• Separation and sorting

• Dispersion
References:-
• Carbon Nanotube Based VLSI Interconnects by Brajesh Kumar Kaushik Manoj
Kumar Majumder.

• Synthesis methods for carbon nanotubes by Renaissa Ghosh , Jie Leu

• Carbon nanotubes (NPTEL LECTURES) by IIT-NOC

• Interconnects in VLSI From Physics Today.

• www.Wikipedia.org
Thank you