Nanocontacts and Nanointerconnects Workshop 2010

The continued improvements in our ability to synthesize and fabricate nanostructures over the past decades have fueled tremendous growth in the area of nanoscience and nanoengineering. A variety of well developed top-down and bottom-up/self-assembly techniques are now available to the researcher to create a wide range of nanoscale materials, with often unique and technologically appealing properties. In many cases, practical applications of nanostructures require the ability to pattern nanoscale electrical contacts and interconnects. Low resistance Ohmic contacts and low RC interconnect delay, for example, are essential for optimum performance of traditional (Si based) nanocircuits. Similar requirements hold true for optoelectronics, energy scavenging, or chem/bio sensor devices based on emerging nanomaterials, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, and nanowires. Schottky or rectifying contacts form the basis for a range of rf detector/mixer and high current rectifier devices. As device dimensions shrink below 45 nm, and as new materials with novel composition and geometry are explored for `next generation` s applications, the underlying physics of contact and interconnect formation and carrier transport needs to be re-examined. Single wall carbon nanotubes, for example, have a quasi-one-dimensional density of states and a relatively inert surface which results in less Fermi level pinning and a strong dependence of the contact barrier height on the metal workfunction. In addition, to assess the new properties of nanocontacts, a detailed experimental determination of structural and electronic properties of these interfaces is needed, which is often complicated by the buried nature of these interfaces. This workshop will address both theoretical and experimental approaches to understanding formation, carrier transport, reliability, and applications of metal/semiconductor nanocontacts and nanointerconnects.
Specific topics include: contact formation and transport at metal contacts to nanotubes, nanowires, graphene, quantum dots, and other nanomaterials; microstructure and morphology of nanointerfaces; reliability and stability of nanointerconnects and nanocontacts; applications of interconnects and nanocontacts in electronics, photonics, sensors, and energy scavenging; novel and established characterization methods applied to nanocontacts; theory and modeling of contact formation and transport at nanointerfaces; integration issues for practical interconnect and contact/metallization schemes for large arrays of nanostructures.