A Transport Framework for Evaluating Nanoscale Interconnect Materials
Abstract
As CMOS technology continues to scale, metallic interconnects increasingly limit circuit performance through rising resistivity, self-heating, and reliability degradation. Although several alternative metals have been proposed, a quantitative framework for evaluating their transport performance under nanoscale confinement remains unavailable. Here, we establish a transport framework by combining independently measured thermal and electrical conductivities with normalized and unnormalized transport figures of merit. We apply this framework to Cu, Ru, W, Co, Ir, and Mo thin films using new steady-state thermoreflectance measurements of Mo, Co, and Ir together with previously reported Cu, Ru, and W data. While Cu exhibits the highest intrinsic transport performance, its effective performance is substantially reduced by thickness scaling and Ta liner resistance. In contrast, Ru and Mo maintain favorable transport properties while enabling barrierless integration, identifying them as promising candidates for next-generation CMOS interconnects
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BibTeX
@misc{islam2026transport,
title = {{A Transport Framework for Evaluating Nanoscale Interconnect Materials}},
author = {Md. Rafiqul Islam and Patrick E. Hopkins},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.06170},
eprint = {2609.06170},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06170},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A Transport Framework for Evaluating Nanoscale Interconnect Materials
AU - Md. Rafiqul Islam
AU - Patrick E. Hopkins
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.06170
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06170
AB - As CMOS technology continues to scale, metallic interconnects increasingly limit circuit performance through rising resistivity, self-heating, and reliability degradation. Although several alternative metals have been proposed, a quantitative framework for evaluating their transport performance under nanoscale confinement remains unavailable. Here, we establish a transport framework by combining independently measured thermal and electrical conductivities with normalized and unnormalized transport figures of merit. We apply this framework to Cu, Ru, W, Co, Ir, and Mo thin films using new steady-state thermoreflectance measurements of Mo, Co, and Ir together with previously reported Cu, Ru, and W data. While Cu exhibits the highest intrinsic transport performance, its effective performance is substantially reduced by thickness scaling and Ta liner resistance. In contrast, Ru and Mo maintain favorable transport properties while enabling barrierless integration, identifying them as promising candidates for next-generation CMOS interconnects
ER -