Modeling of metallic carbon-nanotube interconnects for circuit simulations and a comparison with Cu interconnects for scaled technologies

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have gained immense popularity as possible successors to silicon as the channel material for ultrahigh-performance field-effect transistors (FETs). On the other hand, their metallic counterparts have often been regarded as ideal interconnects for future technology generations. Owing to their high current densities and increased reliability, metallic single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) have been subjects of fundamental research, both in theory, as well as experiments. Metallic CNTs have been modeled for radio-frequency (RF) applications using a transmission-line model. In this paper, we present an efficient circuit-compatible RLC model for metallic SWCNTs, and analyze the impact of SWCNTs on the performance of ultrascaled digital very large scale integration (VLSI) design.