DISSERTATION DEFENSE: Helen Xiangyu Chen

DEPT OF PHYSICS
DISSERTATION DEFENSE








Ph.D. Candidate: Helen Xiangyu Chen
Research Advisor: H.-S. Philip Wong



Date: Monday, August 27, 2012
Time: 9am, refreshment served at 8:45am
Location: Packard 202



Title: Graphene in Back-End-Of-Line Technology



Abstract:



Back-End-Of-Line technology have always been one of the major components of modern high-speed integrated circuits (ICs). In the most advanced IC technology, the capacitance associated with interconnects typically accounts for about 50% of the active processor power consumption, and the associated signal delay along interconnects is one of the main bottlenecks for the routing of high-speed signals. Conventional interconnect materials such as copper are facing great challenges to satisfy requirements when physical dimensions are scaled down to the nanoscale range and the need for new interconnect material becomes prominent.



In this work, we studied applications of graphene in BEOL technology. We successfully demonstrated integration of graphene interconnects with CMOS circuits and studied the high speed performance of these wires. We have also studied the reliability performance and failure mechanism of graphene interconnects. Finally, we demonstrated that application of graphene in BEOL can go beyond being used as interconnect. The unique physical and electrical properties of graphene makes it a promising candidate for being used as copper diffusion barrier as well.