Carbon Nanotubes for Interconnects and Switches

VIACARBON aims to develop carbon nanotubes for vertical and horizontal interconnects for CMOS nodes of 22 nm and beyond, and for NEMS RF switches. Carbon nanotubes are universally proposed as interconnects because of their huge current carrying capacity of 1E9 A/cm2. However, interconnects also need a low resistance, at least as low as copper. As CNTs are 1-dimensional conductors, they have a minimum quantum resistance of 6 kohms, which can only be reduced by laying many CNTs in parallel. The project aims to grow single wall nanotube mats with density of over 1E13 cm-2, by optimisation of the growth catalyst, and convert this into an industrially compatible technology for both vertical and horizontal interconnects.
A second aspect is to fabricate arrays of NEMs as RF switches to support new device functions in the interconnect layer: for reconfigurable interconnects, banks of programmable passives and power current switch.