Carbon Nanotubes and Si Nanowires as an Alternative Route to Future Nanoelectronics

Abstract

Nowadays millions of elementary silicon transistors aggregated into microchips could be considered as a symbol of 20thcentury microelectronic technology which has become a spinal bone of postindustrial society propelling other areas of human life. Silicon technology has reached so high level of sophistication that the further evolutionary shrinking of the size of integrated circuits (IC) looks impossible giving way to the revolutionary ideas and new materials. There are obvious limiting factors which earlier have been considered as inevitable sequences of silicon choice: decrease of speed due to the low electron/channel mobility and great interconnect resistance; increase of power consumption due to the leakage currents, various tunneling effects in dense IC; sufficient rise of the manufacturing and IC design cost, rigid requirements on defects. Nevertheless “there is still enough space at the bottom” for new materials which could compete with silicon. Next decades IC industry should step into the post-Roadmap era when the long term anticipation of device parameters could be very difficult if possible at all. Presentation is devoted to the applications such new materials as Carbon NanoTubes (CNT) and silicon nanowires (SiNW) in modern micro and nano electronics. General aspects of hybrid silicon – carbon technologies and possible roadmaps will be considered and illustrated by the results obtained in new CNT center of STMicroelectronics recently established in Singapore.