Optimal thermal design of CMOS for direct integration of carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) exhibit many remarkable mechanical, electrical and thermal properties, which can be exploited in various smart sensing applications by integrating them in a standard CMOS process. However, such integration process is challenging since CMOS process is not suitable for high temperature application required for local CNT synthesis. This work involves designing power efficient CMOS compatible micro-heaters that can generate CNT growth temperature while maintaining CMOS compatible temperature in the microsystem. One metal interconnect layer and a polysilicon layer available in AMS 0.18 μm CMOS technology have been used to design the micro-heaters. This paper proposes and compares four optimal micro-heater designs alongside their thermal & thermomechanical analysis using ANSYS. The promising results are expected to lead the way for successful implementation of carbon nanotube based sensors in a commercial CMOS process.