Electrical behaviour of carbon nanotube Through-Silicon Vias

The paper investigates the high-frequency distribution of the current density in Through-Silicon Vias made by bundles of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). These bundles are described by means of a recently proposed circuit model which, in spite of its simplicity, accounts for the kinetic and quantum phenomena involved in the electrical propagation along CNTs and includes the effects of size, temperature and chirality. The particular electrical properties of such a new material make the CNT-based TSVs quite insensitive to skin-effect and proximity effect. This is shown with reference to a case-study of a TSV pair for the technology node of 22 nm, for which the effects of frequency and temperature variation are analyzed.