Performance of Topological Insulator Interconnects

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of three-dimensional topological insulators as interconnects in integrated circuits, demonstrating their significantly lower resistance and robustness to disorder compared to copper and graphene at the nanoscale.

Contribution

It introduces the use of 3D topological insulators for interconnects and quantifies their superior electrical performance and disorder resilience using semiclassical and NEGF methods.

Findings

TI interconnects have 1-3 orders lower resistance than copper and graphene.

Disorder increases TI resistance by less than 35%, much less than copper.

TI surface states are highly robust against impurity disorder.

Abstract

The poor performance of copper interconnects at the nanometer scale calls for new material solutions for continued scaling of integrated circuits. We propose the use of three dimensional time-reversal-invariant topological insulators (TIs), which host backscattering-protected surface states, for this purpose. Using semiclassical methods, we demonstrate that nanoscale TI interconnects have a resistance 1-3 orders of magnitude lower than copper interconnects and graphene nanoribbons at the nanometer scale. We use the nonequilibrium Green function (NEGF) formalism to measure the change in conductance of nanoscale TI and metal interconnects caused by the presence of impurity disorder. We show that metal interconnects suffer a resistance increase, relative to the clean limit, in excess of 500% due to disorder while the TI's surface states increase less than 35% in the same regime.