LAUSR

During past decades, the frequency of micro-processors has increased from 66MHz to 4 GHz while their sizes have decreased from 1 μm to 90 nm. As the size of interconnections (Fig. 1a) reduces, the conductors’ resistance and insulators’ capacitance increase, leading to increase in Resistance-Capacitance (RC) delay of ICs. It is important to decrease either conductors’ resistance or dielectrics’ capacitance to have more densely integrated transsitors and less RC delay [1]. To achieve this, there have been ongoing efforts to