Low-Swing Signaling on Monolithically Integrated Global Graphene Interconnects

In this paper, we characterize the performance of monolithically integrated graphene interconnects on a prototype 0.35-μm CMOS chip. The test chip implements an array of transmitter/receivers to analyze the end-to-end data communication on graphene wires. Large-area graphene sheets are first grown b...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lee, Kyeong-Jae, Qazi, Masood, Kong, Jing, Chandrakasan, Anantha P.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70907
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5977-2748
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0551-1208
Description
Summary:In this paper, we characterize the performance of monolithically integrated graphene interconnects on a prototype 0.35-μm CMOS chip. The test chip implements an array of transmitter/receivers to analyze the end-to-end data communication on graphene wires. Large-area graphene sheets are first grown by chemical vapor deposition, which are then subsequently processed into narrow wires up to 1 mm in length. A low-swing signaling technique is applied, which results in a transmitter energy of 0.3-0.7 pJ/b·mm[superscript -1] and a total energy of 2.4-5.2 pJ/b·mm[superscript -1]. Bit error rates below 2 × 10[superscript -10] are measured using a 2[superscript 31] - 1 pseudorandom binary sequence. Minimum voltage swings of 100 mV at 1.5-V supply and 500 mV at 3.3-V supply have also been demonstrated. At present, the graphene wire is largely limited by its growth quality and high sheet resistance.