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2D Materials for Back-end-of-line Interconnect and Novel Logic Applications

ECE Colloquia Seminar

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Location: Zoom details will be shared with current students via Canvas
Speaker:
Zhihong Chen
Purdue University

2D materials have unique properties that can be utilized in designing next generation interconnects or novel devices for logic computation and information storage at the back-end-of-line. In this talk, I will present the evaluation of some 2D materials as alternative barrier/liner to replace the conventional TaN/Ta bilayer in Cu interconnects, showing these 2D materials are capable of efficiently blocking Cu diffusion and their atomically thin body thickness can maximize Cu volume in ultra-scaled interconnects to achieve lower line resistance. We observe that the lifetime of the dielectrics surrounding Cu electrodes can be significantly extended with the presence of the 2D barriers, providing strong evidence for promising alternative barrier/liner solutions. In the 2nd half of my talk, I will discuss the possibility of manipulating entangled charge, spin, and valley degrees of freedom in 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials for logic in memory applications. I will first show that valley current can be electrically induced and detected in monolayer molybdenum disulfide. Significantly, valley transport is observed over four-micron distance at room temperature. I will then show how doping is introduced to access the valance valley with lifted spin degeneracy in monolayer tungsten disulfide in order to achieve valley coupled spin generation. Our TMD based device design provides a unique platform to integrate charge, spin and valley transport, which can be useful for emerging valleytronic based in-memory computing.

 

 

 

Zhihong Chen is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. Her research focuses on understanding physical properties of nano-materials, fabricating nano-structures with desired properties and functionalities for electronic, spintronic, and optoelectronic applications. From 2004 to 2010, she was with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center working on design and fabrication of high performance carbon-based electronics. She was appointed as the manager of the Carbon Technology Group between 2008 and 2010. She has become the Director of the SRC nCORE NEW LIMITS Center since 2018, and Associated Director of Research for Birck Nanotechnology Center in 2019.

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Birck Nanotechnology Center Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, E-mail: zhchen@purdue.edu

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