A bilevel multi-fidelity polynomial chaos approach for the uncertainty quantification of MWCNT interconnect networks with variable imperfect contact resistances

Abstract

With on-chip copper interconnects reaching their performance limits at 22 nanometer technology nodes, multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) interconnects are projected to replace them below this point. A major aspect of MWCNT interconnect design is to perform uncertainty quantification (UQ) in an efficient yet accurate manner. In this paper, a polynomial chaos (PC) based approach is developed for the UQ of MWCNT interconnect networks under the condition that some shells of each conductor of the network are perfectly contacted while others are imperfectly contacted. The key feature of the proposed approach is the development of a bilevel multi-fidelity algorithm where two different low-fidelity models are combined together. The main outcome of using this bilevel approach is to further reduce the computational time cost of state-of-the-art single level multi-fidelity algorithms, especially in the presence of variable imperfect contact resistances where single level multi-fidelity algorithms fail to provide much speedup over conventional PC approaches. The proposed approach adopts a SPICE hybrid model that combines the features of the equivalent single conductor (ESC) model and the rigorous multiconductor circuit (MCC) model of the MWCNT conductors. Then the low-fidelity ESC model, the intermediate-fidelity hybrid model, and the high-fidelity MCC model are exploited in a bilevel multi-fidelity algorithm for the recovery of the PC metamodel of the interconnect network. This proposed bilevel multi-fidelity algorithm is demonstrably 3-5x more numerically efficient than state-of-the-art single level multi-fidelity algorithms while being even more accurate. Once recovered, the PC metamodel is used to derive all statistical information of the network transient responses.