Metallic Carbon Nanotube Interconnects, Part II: a Transmission Line Model

In this paper a transmission line model is derived to describe the propagation along single-wall carbon nanotubes, candidate to be used as interconnects in nanoelectronics applications. The model is obtained in a consistent way from a fluid model of the electron conduction along such a nanostructure. The per-unit-length parameters are strongly dependent on the effects related to the electron inertia and the quantum fluid pressure. The values of the signal propagation velocity, characteristic impedance and characteristic damping of the obtained transmission line are very different from that obtainable, in principle, by ideally scaling the conventional technology. A successful benchmark test with a full-wave model is presented and some case-studies are carried out to investigate the possibility to use such structures as the future interconnects