Abstract: The influence of an electric field on metallic single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) interconnects is studied. A voltage-dependent equivalent circuit model is presented for the impedance parameters of single-wall carbon nanotubes that capture various electron—phonon scattering mechanisms as a function of the electric field. To estimate the performance of SWCNT bundle interconnects, signal delay and power dissipation are calculated based on the field dependent model that results in an improvement in the delay and power estimation accuracy compared to the field-independent model. We find that the power delay product of a SWCNT bundle increases with the increase in electric field but decreases with technology scaling showing that at a low electric field, the SWCNT bundle is a potential reliable alternative interconnect for future high performance VLSI industry at scaled technologies.

Key words: carbon nanotube, single wall carbon nanotube, metallic single wall carbon nanotube, multiwall carbon nanotube, very large scale integration