Thermal phenomena in nanoscale transistors

Heat transfer within the microprocessor chip influences circuit performance and reliability, and on-chip thermal engineering will grow more important with future nodes on the technology roadmap. Near-term problems include nanometer-scale hotspots within individual transistors, millimeter-scale hotspots distributed on the microprocessor surface, and increasing temperatures in multilevel interconnects. Long-term challenges include the large thermal resistances of exotic nanotransistors (ultra-thin SOI, strained silicon, FINFETRillarFET) and 3D multilayer circuit architectures. This talk will summarize on-chip thermal challenges and research ranging from electron-phonon based nanotransistor simulations to microchannel cooling of 3D circuits with solid-state electroosmotic pumping.