Horizontal carbon nanotube interconnects for advanced integrated circuits.

Abstract

ABSTRACTHorizontal carbon nanotube (CNT) interconnects are fabricated using a novel integration scheme yielding record wall densities >1013 shell/cm2, i.e. close to the density required for implementation in advanced integrated circuits. The CNTs are grown vertically from individual via structure and subsequently flipped onto the horizontal wafer surface. Various electrode designs are then used to produce different geometries of metal-to-tube contact such as side contact or end contact. CNT lines - 50 to 100 nm wide and up to 20 µm long - are realized and electrically characterized. The sum of the contact resistances from both ends of the lines is close to 500 Ω for 100 nm diameter lines which leads to a specific contact resistance of 1.6 10-8 Ω.cm2 per tube. With the developed technology, post-annealing of the contact does not improve the resistance values. Both chromium and palladium are used as contact metal. While contact resistance is equivalent with the two metals, the resistance per unit length of the lines does change and is better with palladium. This dependence is explained using a tunnelling model which shows that statistics of individual tube-metal contact is required to properly model the electrical results. Direct experimental evidences showing that only a part of the CNTs in the bundle is electrically connected are also given. Our best line resistivity achieved is 1.6mΩ.cm which is among the best results published for horizontally aligned CNTs and the only one with a realistic geometry for future VLSI interconnects.