First Principle Analysis of Borophene as an On-Chip Interconnect Material.

One of the most chemically adaptable elements is boron which is found in the periodic table between two groups, i.e., metals and nonmetals and may create more than 16 polymorphs that are bulk and made of connected boron polyhedra. Given that boron and carbon are comparable elements, it has been questioned whether two-dimensional (2D) boron could serve as a conceptual starting point for the construction of other boron nanostructures. Using boron as fundamental building blocks, boron nanosheets were synthesized known as borophenes. Borophene is found to be a crystalline form of atomic monolayer boron which was theoretically first predicted in mid-1990s and experimentally synthesized very recently in 2015. In this work, we studied both armchair and zigzag formation of borophene and presented a comparative analysis of their minimum sub-band energy, effective mean free path E n , number of conduction channels N ch , scattering resistance per unit length. The N ch for armchair BNR is 3,2,1 for 22 nm, 13 nm, 7 nm, respectively, which is comparatively more than zigzag BNR. We later proposed Top-Contact BNR (TC-BNR) and Side-Contact BNR (SC-BNR). Our analysis shows that SC-BNR offers 9 6 % less resistance compared to TC-BNR and it is of the order of SC-GNR. Further, if we compare with copper interconnects, BNR is better in terms of performance and copper can be replaced with BNR due to high bulk mean free paths 300 nm and 400 nm compared to copper's 40 nm. Boron, a metalloid, displays remarkable adaptability, giving rise to over sixteen polymorphs, including borophenes—2D boron nano sheets synthesized in 2015. Armchair borophenes demonstrate greater conduction channels (Nch) compared to zigzag counterparts, with Side- Contact BNR (SC-BNR) boasting 96% less resistance than Top-Contact BNR (TC-BNR). These properties position boron nanostructures as competitive alternatives to copper interconnects, offering significantly longer mean free paths (300nm–400nm for BNR versus 40nm for copper). Borophene, akin to graphene in its honeycomb structure, boasts greater strength and flexibility, alongside a slightly reduced mean free path and fourfold higher fermi velocity. Its resistance is comparable to graphene, yet it offers advantages over copper, including excellent superconductivity with results on par with graphene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]