Resistivity of Graphene Nanoribbon Interconnects

TL;DR

This paper investigates the resistivity of graphene nanoribbon interconnects, comparing their electrical properties to copper, and finds that high-quality GNRs can potentially outperform copper for on-chip interconnect applications.

Contribution

It provides experimental data on GNR resistivity and identifies impurity and line-edge roughness scattering as key limiting factors, highlighting the potential of GNRs as copper alternatives.

Findings

GNR resistivity is about 3 times that of Cu at certain widths

Best GNR resistivity is comparable to Cu

Resistivity limited by impurity and LER scattering

Abstract

Graphene nanoribbon interconnects are fabricated, and the extracted resistivity is compared to that of Cu. It is found that the average resistivity at a given line-width (18nm<W<52nm) is about 3X that of a Cu wire, whereas the best GNR has a resistivity comparable to that of Cu. The conductivity is found to be limited by impurity scattering as well as LER scattering; as a result, the best reported GNR resistivity is 3X the limit imposed by substrate phonon scattering. This study reveals that even moderate-quality graphene nanowires have the potential to outperform Cu for use as on-chip interconnects.