Carbon nanotube interconnects for low-power high-speed applications

This paper investigates the prospects of mixed bundle of carbon nanotubes (CNT) as low-power high-speed interconnects for future VLSI applications. The power dissipation and delay of CNT bundle interconnects are examined and compared with that of the Cu interconnects at the 32-nm technology node. We evaluated and compared various performance metrics of interconnects with both CMOS and carbon nanotube field effect transistor (CNFET) driver and FO4 load using transmission line model. The results show that CNT bundle consumes 1.5 to 4 folds smaller power than Cu for intermediate and global interconnects. The CNT bundle interconnects are also faster than Cu except for local interconnects. It is concluded that the mixed bundle of CNTs is a promising candidate for intermediate and global interconnects in future technologies.