A small solution to a big problem

Nanotechnology is the collective term for the ability to control, image or manipulate single atoms and molecules on the sub-100 nanometer scale. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, about 100 000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair and up to 100 times smaller than the geometries applied in today's industrial semiconductor manufacturing.

Problem

The development in the semiconductor industry is governed by the ability to reduce the size of semiconductor components. As semiconductor components get smaller and faster, the copper interconnects transferring data in and out of the microprocessors are reaching their physical limits. At smaller scales, copper interconnects fail to comply with faster data transfer rates due to the increased current and temperature stress.

Out of many potential nanomaterials proposed to circumvent the problems with today's interconnect technology, carbon nanostructures have emerged as a promising candidate due to their unique electrical, optical, and mechanical properties.

Despite the extraordinary properties of carbon nanostructures, the semiconductor industry is facing challenges to integrate such materials into existing electronic circuits by making it CMOS-compatible, and to control the properties of carbon materials in terms of reproducibility and reliability.

Solution

Smoltek is utilizing a patent pending technology platform that enables integration of carbon nanostructures into CMOS and post-CMOS technologies for enhancing performance of existing silicon circuits/microprocessors. The technology comprises a method for controlling the properties of grown nanostructures utilizing existing CMOS manufacturing process technology. As the first application area of Smoltek's technology platform, Smoltek is employing carbon nanostructures as microprocessor interconnects to bring the following added value: