Intel is eyeing carbon nanotubes as a possible replacement for copper wires inside semiconductors, a switch that one day could eliminate some big problems for chipmakers.
The chip giant has managed to create prototype interconnects--microscopic metallic wires inside of chips that link transistors--out of carbon nanotubes and measure how well the interconnects perform. In essence, the experiments are a way to test whether the theories about the properties of carbon nanotubes are accurate.
Mike Mayberry, director of components research at Intel's labs in Oregon, will discuss the research at the International Symposium for the American Vacuum Society next week in San Francisco. Intel worked with California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Portland State University on the project.
Chip interconnects have become a looming headache for chipmakers. Under Moore's Law, chipmakers shrink the components inside semiconductors every two years. Shrinking interconnects, however, increases electrical resistance, which in turn reduces performance. Chipmakers switched from aluminum to copper interconnects in the late 1990s to get around the problem. Unfortunately for Intel and other companies, the resistance will start to become a significant problem in smaller copper interconnects in the coming years.
"With metals, as you reduce the diameter of the interconnect, the resistance can go way up," said Dave Lammers, a director at VLSI Research, a semiconductor analysis firm. "The electrons carom off the metal atoms. That is going to slow things down."
Lammers first wrote about the experimental interconnects in The Chip Insider, VLSI's newsletter.
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