Carbon Nanotube Transistors for Future Technology Nodes

Summary form only given, as follows. The complete presentation was not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings. The first carbon nanotube transistors were reported more than 20 years ago. Since then, they have been suggested to hold great promise of revolutionizing microelectronics, with carbon nanotube’s unique and exceptional electrical properties. Although the actual progress is somewhat slower than the original expectation, carbon nanotube transistors are finally close to the tipping point of becoming a real technology. Here, I will discuss why carbon nanotube transistors are one of the most promising candidates to take torch from silicon as the channel material in the next-generation extremely scaled logic devices, from industrial and technology-development perspective. The recent progress on the processing of carbon nanotubes, from their purification, assembly, to device integration, further indicates that replacing silicon with carbon nanotubes is not only physically plausible but also technically feasible. A concluding discussion provides perspectives on the future of carbon nanotube based nanoelectronics.