Title: Investigation of multi-walled carbon nanotube-based structures for high density integrated capacitors

Authors: Yehia Massoud, Arthur Nieuwoudt

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA

Abstract: The development of high density integrated capacitors is crucial for the implementation of high performance mixed-signal integrated circuits in VLSI applications. In this paper, we investigate three possible high density integrated capacitor configurations based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). We develop an RLC model for the MWCNT-based capacitor configurations and examine the design trade-off between capacitance per area and losses due to parasitic resistance and inductance. The results indicate that the proposed MWCNT-based capacitor configurations can potentially offer orders of magnitude larger capacitance per area and comparable quality factors to traditional metal-based integrated capacitors, which will enable more compact mixed-signal systems with greater performance. This study highlights the performance and capacitive density limits of MWCNT-based capacitors.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes; multi-walled CNT; high density capacitors; integrated capacitors; integrated circuits; VLSI; mixed-signal ICs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNP.2008.020265

International Journal of Nanoparticles, 2008 Vol.1 No.2, pp.96 - 107

Published online: 11 Sep 2008 *

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