Pursuit of Future Interconnect Technology with Aligned Carbon Nanotube Arrays [Nanopackaging]

As the feature size of interconnect technology continues to scale down to nanometer sizes, the state-of-the-art Cu interconnect is expected to run into its physical limit in the near future. Carrier scattering at surfaces and grain boundaries leads to a dramatic increase of Cu resistivity at the nanoscale, resulting increasing resistance capacitance signal delay. The Cu interconnect is becoming more and more vulnerable to the electromigration (EM) caused by the increasing current density. More conductive and robust materials are required for future integrated circuit interconnects to meet these technology development challenges. Among a variety of potential materials, the metallic carbon nanotube (CNT) has emerged as a promising candidate for next-generation interconnect conductor because of its excellent electrical conductivity and high EM resistance.