Can carbon put copper down for the count?

Copper interconnects carry current in today´s integrated circuits, but in the nanometer-size future, the metal just won??t do the job. At this month??s 2010 International Electron Devices Meeting, in San Francisco, European researchers plan to announce that they´re one step closer to a replacement. Nanotubes made of carbon, if grown in dense bundles, can transport large quantities of charge through tiny channels reliably. As part of the European ViaCarbon project, a team led by Jean Dijon, the head of nanotube research at the French government research organization CEA LITEN in Grenoble, says they´ve grown the densest bundles yet, packing 2.5 trillion carbon nanotubes per square centimeter. The density of their interconnects is within an order of magnitude of what´s needed for replacing copper. In the future, such bundles have the potential to exceed copper´s current-carrying capabilities by a factor of 100.