Nanoscale interconnects of gold, copper, and aluminium-based mono-silicide nanotubes for next generation integrated circuits.

Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing. 2026. Vol. 211. Article 110752.

Чибисов А. Н.

Silicides are widely used as local interconnects in integrated circuits (ICs); thus, their nanostructures shall enjoy significant process compatibility with the IC technology. This work reports the utilization of Gold (Au), copper (Cu), and aluminium (Al)-based mono-silicide nanotubes (zig-zag (ZZ) and armchair (AC)) for nanoscale interconnect applications, through a material-device-circuit co-modelling approach. These nanotubes exhibit a metallic electronic nature, a necessary prerequisite for interconnect applications. Au-based silicide nanotubes offer the lowest delay, power delay product (PDP), and the highest maximum frequency of operation (MFOO), followed by their Cu and Al counterparts. Among all these silicide nanotubes, the ZZ-AuSi nanotube offers the least delay of 34.5ps, PDP of 0.19∗10−9W-ps, and the highest MFOO of 28.9 GHz for digital ICs. Given, the poor stability, delay (113ps and 250ps), PDP (0.63∗10−9W-ps and 1.46∗10−9 W-ps) and MFOO (8.85 GHz and 4 GHz), the Al-based silicide nanotubes (AC and ZZ) may be avoided for interconnect applications, while the Au and Cu-based silicide nanotubes seem promising for interconnects for the next generation silicon-based electronics.

Keywords: Delay, Nanotubes, Nanoscale interconnect, Silicide, Fermi velocity, DIL system