Delay analysis of mixed CNT bundles as global interconnect for nanotechnology nodes

Abstract This paper presents modeling of high current capability of mixed carbon nanotube (CNT) bundle interconnects depending upon the type of constituent CNT materials and their orientations. With different arrangements, one category of novel mixed CNT bundles formed by the combination of multi-walled/multi-shell CNT and double-shell CNT bundles (MDCB) are proposed and compared with the mixed CNT bundles (MSCB) formed with multi-shell CNT and single-walled CNT bundles. A time-domain analysis is performed for these structures to analyse the effect of delay and power dissipation. It has also been observed that MDCB structures give better performance (≈ 30%) than MSCB structures in terms of power-delay product at the global length of interconnect for nano-regime technology nodes. Also, MDCB structure formed by placing multi-walled CNTs along the periphery and double-walled CNTs in the centre of structure yields the best result against all proposed mixed CNT bundled structures and can be employed for future interconnect applications.