Carbon Nanotube as a

Interconnect

Presented by

PRAVEEN Y.S
(100942018)
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AGENDA

 Introduction to NANOTECHNOLOGY
 Development of CARBON NANOTUBES
 Properties of carbon nanotubes
 Carbon nanotubes as interconnect
 Refrences

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Nano tubes

 Carbon nanotubes – tubes made

entirely of carbon rings. 1991
 Carbon atoms linked together hexagonally
like chicken wire when rolled they form
nanotubes

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Grapine sheet

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Introduction to the field

 Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are allotropes of

carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure.
 Nanotubes have been constructed with
length-to-diameter ratio of up to
132,000,000:1

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Introduction to the field

 These cylindrical carbon molecules have novel

properties, making them potentially useful in
many applications.
 They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique
electrical properties, and are efficient thermal
conductors.
 The diameter of a nanotube is on the order of a
few nanometers (approximately 1/50,000th of
the width of a human hair), while they can be up
to 18 centimeters in length (as of 2010)
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TYPES OF NANOTUBES

 CNTs can be thought of being made by

rolling up a single atomic layer of graphite to
form a seamless cylinder. The resulting
structure is called single-walled carbon
nanotube (SWCNT)
 If several SWCNTs with varying diameter are
nested concentrically inside one another, the
resulting structure is called a multi-walled
carbon nanotube (MWCNT).

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 These nanotubes are 60 times stronger then
high grade steel.
 They are very light and flexible.

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WHY CARBON NANOTUBE ????

 Traditional interconnect schemes become

problematic due to the increased wire
resistances resulting from grain and surface
scattering effects and the higher current
densities which must be carried.
 Sufficient heat removal from the chip is
already a problem in present day computers.

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properties exhibited by
carbon nanotubes
 The high current carrying capacity
 Mechanical stability of metallic nanotubes

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 Applications in microelectronic interconnects
 The reasonably large band gap of narrow
single-walled nanotubes suggests their use as
nanoscale transistor elements.
 Due to the small radius of curvature at the
tips of the nanotubes, they are ideally suited
to low-voltage field emission devices such as
flat-panel displays

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 In 2013 the ITRS predicts a current density of
3.3×106 A/cm2 .
 a value which, to date, can only be supported
by CNTs, where current densities of 109 A/cm2
in nanotubes without heat sinks have been
reported.

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Thermal conductivity

 The thermal conductivity of nanotubes

exceeds that of diamond by a factor of 2 and
that of copper by a factor of 15 and is,
therefore, ideal for dissipating heat from
sensitive active devices.

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 carbon nanotubes are most likely to be
implemented in wiring applications on
chips.
 Here the integrated circuit can exploit the
outstanding properties of CNTs: high
current carrying capacity, huge thermal
conductivity and length independent
resistance at the scale of interest.

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 nanotubes are ballistic conductors
 a perfect metallic nanotube is the best
normal electron conductor an engineer
can dream of,

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EVALUATION OF NANOTUBES AND
AU-WIRE

 Bottom-up
 Top-down

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NANOTUBES AND AU-WIRE
 ‘Bottom-up’:- where we try to give an answer
based on what is known from mesoscopic
physics.
 where conductance values are estimated from
point contact measurements and density
functional theory calculations (DFT) exist.
‘Top-down’:- where we essentially apply Ohm’s
law in combination with a size-effect described
by the Fuchs–Sondheimer relation.

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 The conductance of one metallic single-walled nanotube of 1
nm in diameter d can be given as G=2G0≈153 μS, with G0≈77
μS being the spin degenerated conductance value for one
ballistically conducting channel, which is represented by one
specific k-value.
 As the diameter of the tube grows additional channels may
contribute to the conductance as more sub-bands can be
occupied.
 Therefore the conductance of a SWCNT can be written as
G=2G0+8G0 exp (−E1/kT)+16G0 exp (−E2/kT)…,
where E1 is proportional to 1/d and in the order of 50 meV for
a 20 nm diameter nanotube.

For multi-walled CNTs one has to add up all contributions from the individual layers [2].

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For Au-wires by Wang et al.

 The calculated
conductance has to
be considered as an
upper limit

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CONDUCTANCE OF CNT ARRAY

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 As a result we would like to emphasize that
the conductance of small-diameter Au-
nanowires scales linearly with diameter and
that equivalent arrangements of carbon
nanotubes conduct equally well.
 But whereas carbon nanotubes show huge
endurance.

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RESISTANCE –DIAMETER
COMPARISON

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 clearly demonstrates that CNT-
interconnects can readily compete with
ordinary metallization schemes and can
even offer the possibility of achieving a by
orders of magnitude lower resistance.

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Comparison with CU

 Metallic tubes are 1-dimensional metals with a

Fermi velocity vF that equals metals (vF ≈
9·107cm/s) .
 electron mean free path lfmp for the electrons
of at least 1 µm. However, due to the low density
of states, the resistivity is only of the order of
that of the best metals (~1µΩcm) despite the
huge mean free path.

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•Data from 2 nanotubes measured at 250°C for 350
hours .
•Data for copper wires are not available for these
dimensions, instead the calculated resistances for Cu-
wires are shown.

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 As shown in Table 1, CNTs can withstand current
densities up to 10^10A/cm2 exceeding copper by a
factor of 1000.
 With respect to resistance, CNTs are favourable in
high aspect ratio structure like vias, where also the
highest current densities are expected

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CNT AS INTERCONNECT

 Filling via structures with nanotubes requires one

ore more particles at the bottom of the via which
then allow CNT growth by chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) at 450-800°C with a carbon
containing gas.
 The CVD process can be supported by plasma
enhancement (PECVD) and bias Voltage .

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 The catalyst material (Fe, Ni, Co or combinations of
them with Mo) is usually deposited as a thin film by
physical vapor deposition (PVD) or from solutions.
Particle formation occurs during the heating step.
 which breaks up the thin film into clusters.
 Ion bombardment in plasmas supports this particle
formation.
 Careful material and interface design in combination
with low temperature budget and time dependent
diffusion phenomena, needs to be taken into
account to guarantee CNT growth

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 The interaction between catalyst layer and
supporting metal electrode needs to be low, in
order to suppress interdiffusion and allow
particle formation in the restricted temperature
regime.
 Metals with a natural thin oxide layer (Ta, Al, Ti,
Cu, Cr) show low wetting behaviour for some
catalyst materials and are therefore suitable as
electrode materials.

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The quality of nanotubes

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• Here, the CNT via is grown on the metal 1 layer before
the deposition of the inter-metal dielectric (IMD).
•Lithographically defined nickel spots act as catalyst
particles, from where carbon fibers are grown.
•Fibers need to be aligned perpendicular to the surface.
This is achieved by PECVD and an applied bias voltage,
which aligns the fibers almost perpendicular to the wafer.
Subsequently, SiO2 is deposited and the wafer is
planarized

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 with chemical wafer polishing (CMP). The last
step also
 opens the nanotube ends for contacts with
metal 2 layer.

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 very high resistance of ~ 300 kΩ per CNT interconnect
has been evaluated for that approach, which may be
attributed to the imperfect structure of PECVD grown
MWCNTs.
 The approach is especially suited for single MWCNT
fillings because high density growth could not be
demonstrated.
 In addition, this approach can also be used to create high
aspect ratio capacitor electrodes for DRAM applications.

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buried catalyst approach

 where the dry etching of the via has to stop on

the thin Ni- or Co-catalyst layer .
 Arrays of MWCNTs have been grown in ~2µm
 diameter vias by hot-filament CVD (HF-CVD)
 A resistance of ~134 kΩ per MWCNT has been
achieved, a value which again can be attributed
to the quality of the tubes grown by HF-CVD.

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Refrences
 Carbon Nanotubes for Interconnect Applications (cu):-
Franz Kreupl, Andrew P. Graham, Maik Liebau, Georg S.
Duesberg, Robert Seidel, Eugen Unger
 C arbon nanotubes in interconnect (Au)applications F.
Kreupl , A.P. Graham, G.S. Duesberg, W. Steinhogl, M.
Liebau, E. Unger,
¨ W. Honlein
 Nano/stanford
 Indian nanoelectronics users program (INUP)
 WIKIPEDIA

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