Transient Analysis of Crosstalk Induced Effects in Mixed CNT Bundle Interconnects Using FDTD Technique

The nanoscale regime in current IC technology considers mixed carbon nanotube bundles (MCBs) as a potential on-chip interconnect alternative to the conventional copper interconnects. This paper presents a temperature-dependent equivalent single conductor (ESC) model for on-chip MCB interconnect structure. A finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique is used to model the Telegrapher's equations. To the best of authors' knowledge, it is for the first time that temperature-dependent ESC modeling and crosstalk for coupled-MCB interconnect line structures have been reported using FDTD. The proposed numerical model is highly time as well as memory efficient and accurate to analyze the crosstalk induced propagation delay, and peak voltage for different cases of input switching. The performance parameters obtained for the proposed model are validated with HSPICE simulations. The crosstalk induced propagation delay shows less than 1% error for the proposed model and HSPICE simulations. The robustness of the proposed model is verified against a range of test cases. The proposed model is of high importance as it can be used to determine the crosstalk induced performance metrics for on-chip MCB interconnects.