The semiconductor industry is a cornerstone of today's high-tech economy, supporting over 100,000 direct and even more indirect jobs in Europe. This position has been achieved through continued miniaturization in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which will only last for a maximum 10-15 more years. In line with its Lisbon Strategy, the EC has identified an urgent need to assess possible technology solutions for the "Beyond CMOS" era to meet the challenges of global competition.
The major ICT challenge is to find alternatives for information processing and storage beyond the limits of existing CMOS. The latest release of the ITRS identifies carbon nano-tubes as one candidate to replace copper in next-generation nano-interconnects. Main limitations of approaches currently exploited is related to the difficulties in the control of the growth process CNTs having well defined micro-structural characteristics and physical properties, and in the need of electron-beam lithography (EBL) for CNT growth. The resulting process is poorly reliable and costly, thus making CNT technology not suitable at present for ICT devices and systems of the future. In addition efficient design methods and tools for nano-interconnects are not available, thus strongly reducing the competitiveness of European microelectronic industry with respect to the one of US and Asian companies. The technology for nano-interconnect currently under development within CATHERINE, will bring a real innovation into electronics market since it will provide a solution for post-CMOS interconnections. Actually, the approaches developed for the fabrication of the nano-interconnect are cost-effective and can be easily implemented at industrial scale.
With this technology available it will be possible to realize new nano-devices for potential application in:
1. nano-medicine applications, like drug delivery or in situ destruction of cancerous cells;
2. information technologies of the future, allowing the development of faster and smaller electronics;
3. space sector, due to the huge saving of weight in the realization of smaller devices and electronics.
